Prison Break!

Do you ever feel like you just can’t express yourself and no one understands you? Like you’re all alone?  Like your spirit has a will of its own, but the body is weak? Like you’re completely caged up? Plato knew just how you feel.

Thousands of years ago, Plato, the Philosopher King, did not like his body. Nor anyone else’s for that matter.  According to Plato, the inner-self, the real person, was trapped in and cursed with a physical body prone to illness, injury, and all sorts of degrading wants and temptations.  He believed the only escape from this horrid cage was death, which would finally grant the soul true freedom.

As Christians, we must take issue with some of what Plato said when we consider that our bodies are temples to God and that we are created in the Image of God.  To hold such a low view of the human body and to despise it altogether is to despise some of God’s finest handiwork and His very Image.  Yet Plato was, I think, not too far off from the truth.

While the human body is an incredible specimen of creation, it pales in comparison to the human spirit. After all, what is the body but merely the vehicle (or cage) of the spirit? We say things like, “my body aches,” or, “their body is severely injured.” The words “my” and “their” make it clear that the body is not an entity in and of itself, but merely the possession of a truer, deeper being: the soul.

One can only imagine the freedom of shuffling off this mortal coil.  For instance, without being able to truly transfer thoughts or deep emotion, communication is severely hampered. We can only interpret what little of it can escape a person’s lips or show in their body language—and even then only through the hazy lenses of our physical eyes and ears.  We enjoy hugging a family member or friend or spouse, but imagine what it would be like for two inner-selves to embrace with no prison walls getting between them.  Perhaps this is why they call it “Heaven.”

But perhaps we don’t have to wait until death to get a taste of this freedom. What if our whole lives are meant to be a grand effort to break out of this prison, becoming freer and freer over time?  At the very beginning of life before birth, we are a spirit trapped in a cage within a cage, are we not? As a baby, the prison of our body is overwhelming, keeping us oblivious to the needs of those around us, such as our parent’s need for rest at night; we know only our own feelings and desires.  Over time, we slowly learn to sense others’ needs outside our own, growing in our independence and learning to be a productive member of a home.  Later on in life, we even begin to develop attractions to other caged souls who become friends and lovers, slowly tearing down the prison walls that separate us; some might even call marriage the complete removal of the walls between two people desiring to share the same prison cell until the ultimate freedom (read “Till death do us part”).  It would seem that the more we live beyond our own personal wants and feelings, showing care for others and considering their needs and feelings, the freer we become.

As a Christian, I believe that ultimate freedom comes from Christ.  It was He who first broke down the infinitely daunting walls that separated us from God. Because of that pivotal moment in human history, no matter how alone we feel inside our cell, God can be right there with us giving light and life to our dark internal worlds, and with no more need for mediators and no more walls.

It is impossible to truly define God (a definable god would be a very boring god indeed), but we can describe Him, and one of the strongest descriptions we have of Him is pure Love.  Based on the previous arguments of how a selfless nature is what brings us further out of the prison of self, it would seem logical to consider this Love as the ultimate tool for breaking down these walls.  If selfish vices and faults are the bricks and mortar of our prison walls, what could possibly work better against them than selfless love, much more a pure Love originating from beyond ourselves?

We begin life bound and limited to self-centred senses and desires, and as we grow, we often feel a sense of entrapment as if we’re meant for something more in life.  Plato got it right when he taught us to pursue this freedom outside ourselves through selfless love.  I do not wish to say that this is a definite picture of the human soul or even accepted religious doctrine regarding our relation to God and the world around us, but to merely convey ideas I believe can help people grow and more deeply experience the world around them.