The Importance of Self-Care
For our winter training with our student leaders, I did a workshop on self-care and boundaries. I started with a theological basis for these practices, as some Christians seem to think that the holiest way of living is to ignore your own needs until you are so unhealthy you can’t ignore them any longer. I actually think Jesus modeled a sustainable way of living that involved both self-care and boundaries, and as we are called to embrace His way, we should be considering these practices for ourselves as well.
Essentially the theology behind it is this: keeping the Sabbath, or setting aside time for rest and communing with the Lord, is one of the Ten Commandments. You know, on the list with “do not murder” and “do not steal,” He also told us to set aside a day of the week to rest. But we think of “keeping the Sabbath” as a suggestion rather than a commandment. We do not take it seriously. Second is that all too familiar Christian catchphrase, “your body is a temple.” What I told my students and what I will tell you is that this is much more than “don’t have sex or get tattoos” like our youth pastors may have told us (I don’t think Jesus would tell us either of those things, when done in the right context). 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 says, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.” This involves much more than avoiding cigarettes, it shows us that God holistically cares about us, not just our hearts or minds but our health and our bodies as well.
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