Therapy

 March 2, 2021

I Corinthians 12:12-27

“The pain you feel in your hip isn’t really coming from the hip. The problem is in your core. The muscles there are weak, which allows your spine to go out of alignment, which causes the hip pain.” In other words, “The head bone’s connected to the neck bone; the neck bone’s connected to the backbone; the backbone’s connected to the hip bone...” The first sentence is what my physical therapist told me two weeks ago. The second is my interpretation of it. Today began week three of therapy to deal with the shooting pain in my hip that’s been aggravating me for three years.

My therapist was simply reminding me of a truth we know instinctively, but which we independent Americans tend to forget: everything is connected. We admire the Lone Ranger, the Rambo who tackle institutional ills all by themselves, beating the odds, and emerging victorious, but that’s rarely how things turn out in real life. In warfare, stealth operations have their place, but battles are won with a concentration of firepower and manpower.

In the realm of the spiritual life too, everything is connected. A private moral lapse, an unhealed hurt, a hidden resentment, may not be apparent at the beginning, but like a crack in a windshield, it will eventually spread till the whole is spoiled. Looking at the problem as it manifests, you would never imagine where it started. 

Churches and other institutions are filled with these spiritual connections; like spider webs, they are spun over the course of years. The bonds that bless us can become the bondage that binds us. All it takes is an offense taken, forgiveness withheld, a grudge nursed. No one sees it at first, and often by the time the matter is discovered, the poison has spread through the whole body. 

My bones and nerves were designed by God to function smoothly together, but if I get into the habit of bad posture, or receive an injury, the very structure God intended to enable me to live and serve becomes an avenue of pain and disability. I am engaging in specific exercises to strengthen parts of me I didn’t know had been weakened. I do it so my body can function as God planned. It is just as important to engage in corrective spiritual exercises to realign my heart and soul so my inner life corresponds to God’s will. And it is equally important that the entire body of Christ engage in whatever corrective therapy is needed for us to function as the Father envisions.