What does our bodies have to do with being spiritual? If “being saved” (as it is traditionally talked about) is supposedly all about “snatching souls from the flames of hell” then why did God give us our bodies? Did He give them to torture us with non-spiritual, fleshly desires? Is being a Christian all about seeing how well you can make it through this life without indulging too many passions and yet living with the guilt all along the way? What does it mean, when the Bible says that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us? Does the Bible even support conventional views of what it means to be spiritual or godly? Does believing that God took on human flesh in Jesus have any implications on how we approach all things fleshly? Does our belief in the Resurrection cause us to negate all things having to do with the body? Or is it the exact opposite?

Lots of questions here. But if you find yourself wondering about whether the preaching you’ve heard growing up corresponds to the spirituality embodied by Jesus, then I have a book for you. Rodney Clapp has written a great book entitled, Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for People, not Angels. In this book, the author entertains most all of the religious conventionality surrounding the questions I asked above. The most helpful part of the book was how it approaches and orients issues of sexuality and death. Christianity did not produce the Kama Sutra, in fact it has advocated, historically, the virginity of both Jesus and his mother. From one perspective, one could see “how deep and strong runs the Christian tradition’s hesitancies and reservations about sexual pleasure, even within wedlock” (p. 57). So this book wrestles with the past and tries to offer a “contemporary Christian spirituality” which affirms the past without impressing its “storylines and expectations” on us in the present. This is not to say that the present culture goes without critique in the book. In fact, Clapp demonstrates how our consumer capitalistic culture works against us instead of helping us be fully human and in the realm of sex, “often manufactures new possibilities for sexual insecurity along with the creation of new products” (65). This, however, doesn’t leave the reader with a lack of any positive ways of conceiving or approaching these issues. Clapp says that “Christian spirituality can affirm and embrace, rather than simply exclude and deny, sexual desire … [and] is intended exactly to more profoundly and completely expose the lovers, their intentions and selves, to one another and to bind them to one another more unreservedly in that trust-enhancing exposure” (203-204). Clapp unabashedly claims that Christian marriage is the best place for this kind of sex which “most profoundly gives life and deepens companionship when it is both bounded and extended by fidelity” (205).

Rodney takes his argument for an embodied Christian spirituality to the level of society and to the Church and its sacraments. He makes this comparison in this way: “A friend is someone whose presence can only sustain and enhance our life. A friend is someone we make ourselves available to and who makes himself or herself available in turn. The richest, most important friendships cannot persist on a diet of only phone calls or e-mail messages. At least on occasions our friends must be there with us, beside us, to share our joys and help us bear our trials. We need to be able to look directly into their eyes, hear their voice, squeeze their shoulders. We need to be able to lay hold of them.” And it is the laying hold of the other that Clapp illustrates in his speech about the sacraments, Church, and sex.

I applaud Rodney Clapp’s work here of dispelling conventional thinking on what it means to follow Jesus in a concrete, earthy way. We can no longer think that this way of life is only meant for priests, monks, and angels. It is a good book that will open you up to other potential ways of imagining the Christian faith, sex, death, and the Church. In the religious climate of “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” Rodney Clapp’s book is a welcomed invitation to do just the opposite–and be spiritual!