Flesh Is Best

“Man’s spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best.” — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Bear with me as I tease out a thesis.

A few years back, I was sitting next to my buddy in his Toyota Tundra, chatting about the pastoral care of young people. We both led small groups composed of young married couples from our parish. My buddy lamented that many of the men — married, most with young children — spent hours a day playing video games. Video games, for crying out loud! I admit, I’m biased. I’ve never had a gaming system. I played a few computer games growing up — Sim Ant, Lemmings, some game out of a Chex cereal box — but video games were never my thing.

In college, I couldn’t understand how dudes could spend untold hours a day gaming. In fact, when I was a resident assistant in the dorms, one of the dudes on my floor got kicked out of school because of failing grades. He didn’t tell his parents. Instead, he continued to live in the dorms for several months though he was no longer enrolled. Doing what? Fear not. He was not selling drugs or corrupting coeds. He was playing video games. For hours and hours and hours on end.

Exasperated, I told my buddy in his Tundra, “I’d rather my sons” — I had three little ones at the time, but that number has since more than doubled — “were out causing trouble, getting drunk, trying to get laid, than sitting at home in the basement, addicted to video games.” Call it my Catholic sacramental view of the world. I figured that if my kids were at least participating in the physical world — getting scraped and bruised and bloody — then they were in the game. If they had a zest and desire for the real world, for physicality, for flesh, for joy and pleasure and the stuff of life, then they were well on their way to being converted to Christ.