On Having or Being Bodies

During Sacrament meeting at my sister's ward, I had two more insights that relate to things I had blogged about recently. One of them came from the Sacrament hymn, and the other came from one of the talks. I'll blog about the talk first.

The talk was about the death of the speaker's father and the comfort that comes from knowing that your family is eternal. I could blog about that, I suppose, but the part that really stood out to me was when the speaker said "I went to where my father's body was." Note that it was his father's body that the speaker went to, not the speaker's father himself. The speaker's father was elsewhere. He had "passed on," or, like another hymn we sung that morning said, he had "gone ahead." This phrase reminded me that, at least after death, our identities are not linked to our bodies, but to our spirits. When the spirit is gone, the person is gone. The person is the spirit.

Yet, in mortality, we often describe our bodies in terms of ourselves. Instead of saying "my body is tall" or "I have a tall body," we say "I am tall." Why is that? Is it just to shorten the phrase so it rolls off the tongue easier? Is it to be politically correct and not start long, confusing arguments with people who don't believe in spirits or souls? I don't think so. I think it's that we consider our bodies as being part of our identities, at least while we're alive. And, considering what I've learned about the multiple definitions of the word "soul," that makes perfect sense.

While we're alive, our spirits and bodies are connected to form a dual-entity called a soul. When we die, our spirits and bodies are separated from each other. Our bodies stay on earth, and we live on as beings called spirits or souls, as we had before we were born. Eventually, our spirits and bodies will be reunited, and the dual-being that results will again be called a soul. Throughout the many stages of our eternal existence, we (or the part of us that is most fundamental to our identities) remain with our spirits, or rather, we remain spirits, and whether our spirits are connected to bodies or not, we can accurately be described as souls.

While we're mortal, and after we're resurrected, we do and will have bodies, and those bodies are and will be integral parts of our mortal or eternal identities. If our bodies are brown- or white-skinned, we can say that we are black or white, because the nature and condition of our bodies are an important part of our identities. Yet, between our death and resurrection, our bodies will be no longer part of us, and therefore, no longer part of who we are. We are not our bodies, but we do have bodies, and as long as we have them, they are and will be part of who we are.