Becoming What We Behold

I only remember one thing from high school health class. Don’t judge my teacher. He was there to coach football, not teach health, and I was there to pass notes to my friends, not learn anatomy. But despite his disinterest in the subject and my distraction from it, I remember one thing he said that sounded profound at the time: “You are what you eat.”

He pointed to a picture of the food pyramid (look it up if you’ve never heard of it - it is a real thing) and said, “You are what you eat. If you eat pizza, ice cream, and candy all day, your body will begin to look like those foods.” At first, I was startled. Like almost all high school boys, my diet consisted mostly of pizza, hamburgers, soda, chips, and candy. The thought of turning into a gummy bear sounded both disastrous and delicious. But it turns out, as you might already know (because you listened in health class), body composition and diet are a lot more complicated than this.

For a long time, I thought “you are what you eat,” was just a way to discourage us from eating too much of the wrong kinds of foods, but what very few people know is this quote did not begin its journey into our conversations as a statement about our diet, it began as a statement about our existence. Specifically, it was objecting to the Christian view of our existence. It turns out my health class had become a school of philosophy, which surely would have boggled the mind of that teacher just trying to make it to after school practice if he had realized he stumbled upon something more fundamental than food.

The quote originates with a German philosopher named Ludwig Feuerbach. Feuerbach was no fan of Christianity. Not at all. He was what we call a “materialist.” He believed all we are is matter. For Feuerbach, there is nothing beyond the material world: no God; no heaven; no soul. So, when he said, “Man is what he eats.” He didn’t mean that if you ate a donut, you’d begin to look like a donut (thank heavens!). He meant you and the donut are the same thing. You both are matter. Nothing more and nothing less.

Thankfully, Feuerbach was wrong. We aren’t what we eat. We are more than matter. We humans are creatures made in the image of God, composed of body and soul. We were made with a purpose. We are not becoming what we eat, but we are becoming something. We were created to grow and change, to become.

We are born into this world not knowing who we are, but with a deep desire to become something more. We are like a toddler who doesn’t know their own age but pretends to be a great lion. We enter this world not knowing what we are, who we are meant to be, and how we got here, yet absolutely certain we were meant to become something more than we are by nature.

I don’t just mean we are born as infants who haven’t yet developed self-awareness. That’s true, but it isn’t truly the problem. Our ignorance isn’t fundamentally developmental, it goes deeper, all the way to our soul. We are born separated from who we were designed to be. And separated from the God who can transform us into that “something more.” It’s not just that we don’t know who we were created to be, it’s that we can’t know it. Our true identity as image bearers of God is across a great chasm that we cannot cross on our own.

Because we don’t know who we are, we have no clue as to what we can become. So, we end up becoming the sum total of what hooks our love, desire, knowledge, and imagination. We end up looking like whatever we love. What we worship begins to work itself out in what we believe, why we think we are here, and the way we live.

As some have said: we become what we behold.

We are more changeable than we might believe. Even the most stubborn among us is constantly being shaped by who and what is around them, like a large boulder sitting in a riverbed. You may not see it over a matter of seconds but watch that boulder for one hundred years. Then watch it for a hundred more. Bit by bit, the river shapes the boulder, cutting it back, softening the edges, and re-forming the rock.

Formation is slow, but it is constant. It never stops. We are changing–being changed–in ways we are aware of and unaware of at all times. But contrary to what some have suggested, we don’t begin as blank slates. We are born into this world malformed, out of shape. We are in desperate need to be re-formed, to be re-aligned with the ways, words, and wonders of God. Why? Because God wants us to enjoy fellowship with Him, His people, and His world, but we can’t do this unless we are re-formed.

Before we can become what we were always intended to be, we must be born again. Made new. Made alive. To be re-formed we have to first be transformed. This is the journey of Christian formation: becoming what we were already declared to be; becoming who we already are in Christ.

The journey of Christian formation begins, ends, and is filled with God’s people beholding God.

And as we behold God, we become like Him.