THEARTOFCHRIST — Issue 21: Posture
Made Straight
How Christ brings about life, and how He supplies it more abundantly.

Anchor: The Woman Made Straight

A woman had been bent over for eighteen years and could not straighten herself at all, and when Jesus saw her He called her to Him, laid His hands on her, and at once she was made straight, and she glorified God (Luke 13:11-13, paraphrase).

The herald announces the order of that sentence, because the order is the whole lesson. She did not straighten herself and then come to Him. She was bent, He called, He touched, she was made straight. The straightening came from outside her, and the glorifying followed it. Posture, in Scripture, is not first a thing a man achieves. It is first a thing done to a man.

The world sells posture the other way round. Stand up straight, shoulders back, chin up, and the mind will follow. Fake it until you make it. The body is presented as a lever on the soul: arrange the outside, and the inside will rearrange itself. Hold the pose of confidence long enough, and confidence arrives. Hold the pose of power, and power follows. Posture becomes a technique for becoming someone — a performance the man puts on until the performance becomes him.

There is a grain of observation in it, and that is why it sells. A slumped man does feel defeated. An upright man does feel steadier. The body and the mood do move together. But the world's program turns an observation into a ladder, and a ladder into a verdict. Stand straight, and you are becoming someone. Slump, and you are failing at yourself. The body becomes a billboard for the worth of the man inside it, and every mirror becomes a judge.

That is where posture turns cruel. The man who cannot stand straight — the back injured, the body bent by age or illness — reads his own frame as a verdict on his character. The man who can stand straight reads his frame as proof of his discipline, and the proof curdles into pride. The same pose sold as freedom becomes a mask in both directions, and the mask always slips, because a posture held by effort alone lasts only as long as the effort lasts. The man who built his confidence on his carriage discovers that his god was always tired.

Apart from Christ, posture is a work, and a work always ends in one of two places: pride in the work done, or despair at the work undone. The man is alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18, paraphrase), and so even his standing becomes a place where he is cut off from life — the body held up by his own strength, the strength running out, the verdict waiting underneath.

Scripture bears witness to a different maker of posture. God made man upright (Eccl 7:29, paraphrase). Uprightness is not a technique man invented. It is a shape man was given. The bent woman was not told to try harder at standing. She was loosed from what bent her, and the loosing made her straight. The movement runs bent, called, touched, straightened, glorifying — and every step of it is His doing except the last, which is her praise. The connectors reveal the movement: what bent her did not straighten her, what straightened her was not her effort, and what followed the straightening was not self-congratulation but glory given to God.

In Christ, posture is received, then practiced.

The man hears that he is made straight before he stands straight, and the hearing itself is the gift — God gives hearing, and God gives growth, so that the straightened man learns to live straightened. Standing firm is then fruit rather than purchase: the command to stand firm, having fastened on truth and put on righteousness (Eph 6:13-14, paraphrase), is spoken to men already held, not to men holding themselves up. The belt and the breastplate are given before the standing is commanded. The man stands because he has been stood up, and the standing is a confession, not a climb.

The same movement reaches the drooping parts of ordinary life. Lift the drooping hands and strengthen the weak knees, and make straight paths for the feet, so that what is lame is not put out of joint but healed (Heb 12:12-13, paraphrase). The hands are lifted, the knees are strengthened, the paths are made straight — and the healing is the point, not the performance. A straight path is not a pose struck for onlookers. It is a road made level so that a lame man can walk it without falling.

The body, too, is received before it is managed. The body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom the man has from God, and the man is not his own (1 Cor 6:19, paraphrase). A temple is not a billboard. It is a dwelling, kept because Someone dwells in it. The man presents his body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Rom 12:1, paraphrase) — presented, not perfected first.

Posture Reaches the Day

Every topic in this workshop relates to physical life, and posture is the most constant of them all — standing at the sink, sitting at the desk, lying down at night, the body held in one shape or another from morning to evening.

The world's program counts the carriage: shoulders back, spine aligned, chin level, breaks taken to stretch, slouching caught and corrected. Apart from Christ, the count is the verdict: the man who is alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18, paraphrase) treats even his standing as a work to perform, and so his posture becomes another place where he is cut off from life.

In Christ, the body is a body already straightened and already dwelt in. Standing tall, sitting upright, stretching when the muscles tighten, noticing the slump and easing out of it — the body does what a held creature does: living in a shape given to it, not earning a shape withheld from it. The upright sitting does not make the man acceptable before God. The upright sitting receives a body already made a temple in Christ, and the receiving itself becomes a small confession that the body is worth holding well because the Lord dwells in it.

This receiving also reaches the neighbor. A straight back that does not stoop to pass another by, a body turned toward the one speaking rather than away, a seat offered, a load carried beside another — these are not performances of worth. They are love in bodily form, the held man sparing his neighbor what he can spare him, because Christ first held him when he could not hold himself. The bent woman glorified God, and the glorifying spilled outward; a body made straight does not admire itself in the mirror. It turns toward the neighbor, because the Giver is received, and the neighbor with Him.

That is life, supplied more abundantly (John 10:10, paraphrase): a man whose standing is no longer a project of self-making, whose slump is no longer his verdict, whose body — straight or stooped on a given day — is a body Christ has loosed, received in Christ, and turned toward the neighbor, in Christ.