The Flesh
People typically view themselves as their body first: that is who we are, how we function, how we are seen, and where we experience “real” pleasure, suffering and death. We put great emphasis on our physical form. We feed it, we adorn it, and we seek to please it in any way possible. However, our bodies, or as the Church Fathers referred to it, the flesh, can be easily become our enemy. As St Hesychios the Priest said:
The flesh is a treacherous friend, and the more it is coddled the more it fights back.
By flesh we are not referring to the tissue in the cell and cellular material that comprises the human body. We are talking about the movements and actions of the flesh that take place through our will, which translates into human behavior. The flesh can be subject to temptation through emotions and desires which can lead the soul to be captivate and even enslaved to such things as anger, lust, food, drink, and bodily comfort that results in self worship, which tends to lead to unhappiness and even depression.
In the teachings of the saints and mystics, the flesh is referred to as the first sin. The fall of Adam and Eve came through the desire of the flesh, that is to eat in disobedience. St. Paul talked about this in the New Testament (Galatians 5:17):
For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.
This enemy often starts with soft, innocent requests for comfort. Unchecked, this leads to laziness, complaining, irritability, snacking, overeating, more laziness and can end in some form of sexual activity or dejection. Comfort lulls us into laziness and boredom, which lead to depression and apathy. What begins as a small change in the soul can lead to a collection of “little comforts” that we order our day around, sustaining cycles of selfish pleasure. The end result that this enemy proposes is spiritual apathy and retreat from God and His holy will.
When talking about this enemy, we must also mention the obsession we have with adorning the body. Our obsession with trends in fashion, clothing, hair styles, accessories and jewelry, all of which is over sexualized, would lead one to think that we are gods in mating season. This is all combined with the inhuman compulsion for self-disfigurement by way of plastic surgery and the endless new extreme diets and exercise crazes.
For the modern person, this battle of the flesh is like no other fight with which any prior generation has been confronted. Everything is designed around comfort and self-worship. We have indoor plumbing, electricity, air conditioning, access to all sorts of foods and drugs. Never before in history has a general population enjoyed all of these, and never before has depression and suicide grabbed the throats of a civilization so firmly.
When we do not fight against the tendencies and desires of the flesh, we can become captive to these comforts. In our day and age, lack of self-control with the body is leading the masses into horrible addictions with food, alcohol and drugs—addictions that are destroying people’s lives. It’s strange, but the flesh and its unbridled desires can ultimately end up killing us. Thomas Moffett, the sixteenth-century English naturalist said:
Men dig their graves with their own teeth and die by those fated instruments more than the weapons of their enemies.
In other words, we kill ourselves by what we ingest. In our age, this would not only include the garbage that we eat, but tragically it can also can include the numerous drugs and gallons of alcohol with which we fill ourselves. Drug and alcohol addiction are spiraling out of control, smoking is one of the highest killers, and heart disease is the number one cause of death.
Comforts and bodily laziness are so easy in our modern age. We are raised on comfort. However, comfort is an enemy on the path to success in the spiritual life. Comfort lulls us into laziness, boredom and all kinds of excess. This leads to depression and apathy. Later, we will dig deep into training ourselves to understand the various movements of the body and mastering self-control. As Christians we are called to subjugate our bodies with all of its lusts, desires and hungers. We are to be masters of our bodies and not let our bodies master us. As St. Paul said in one of his letters:
And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Galatians 5:24).
Self-mastery is what he is talking about here. St. John Cassian († AD 435) said it this way:
When the Apostle said, ‘Make no provision to fulfill the desires of the flesh’ (Rom. 13:14), he was not forbidding us to provide for the needs of life; he was warning us against self-indulgence.
This is a battle that we will fight until we die. St Hesychios the Priest:
Until you leave this world, do not trust the flesh. ‘The will of the flesh,’ it is said, ‘is hostile to God; for it is not subject to the law of God. The flesh desires against the Spirit. They that are in the flesh cannot conform to God’s will; but we are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit’ (cf. Rom. 8:7-9; Gal. 5:17).
In the end, we are both body and soul, and the two living in harmony is the goal of the saint. St. Mark the Ascetic encourages us to consider that life lived in the spirit is the higher goal.
The flesh with its desire is opposed to the spirit, and the spirit opposed to the flesh, and those who live in the spirit will not carry out the desire of the flesh (cf. Gal. 5:15-17).
Lastly, St. Neilos The Ascetic († AD 451) sums up this fight. He ends with the basic needs of simply bread and water: