Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age

by Samuel James

As theologian John Kleinig has observed, “society as a whole does not know what to make of the body.”11 Kleinig points out that many modern people express confusion about the body through one of two ways. First, they become “obsessed” with achieving a body they desire, so they go to great lengths to get slimmer, fitter, stronger, or prettier. Kleinig sums up the situation: “My ideal self, the person I would like to be, must match that ideal body. Yet that ideal is never fixed. It changes as fashions change.”12 The result for many people, however, is a profound and often debilitating shame over the way their body fails to look like the ideal body. This shame is expressed through an increasing alienation from our bodies, as we despair of having the image we desire and try harder and harder to separate our “inner self” from our disappointing physical self.