Answer

Why Does God Care What I Do With My Body?

You may know that you are a child of God and still wonder why He cares so much about what you do with your body. If a choice is personal, why should it matter spiritually?

Because your body is not a thing you happen to own. It is part of what you are, and it is permanent. That single claim is why a choice about your body is not a choice about something external to you, and it is where God’s boundaries around sexuality come from.

Eternal Truths

The spirit and the body together are the soul. In Doctrine and Covenants 88:15, the Lord was teaching Joseph Smith about resurrection and eternal glory when He said that “the spirit and the body are the soul of man.” Your body is not something your spirit borrows for a few decades. Receiving one is part of your eternal development, and through Jesus Christ it will one day be resurrected.

Your body is tied to identity, marriage and the power to create life. The Family: A Proclamation to the World connects all three. President Russell M. Nelson has called the body a magnificent gift from Heavenly Father that helps us fulfil the full measure of our creation. God’s guidance about sexuality grows out of that purpose rather than out of suspicion.

What Can Make This Confusing?

It is easy to absorb the idea that freedom means deciding for yourself what your body means and what its powers are for. Agency is real and God defends it more seriously than anyone. But agency works best joined to truth, and a smaller view of the body makes God’s guidance feel intrusive instead of protective. Nobody is disputing that the choice is yours. What is disputed is the assumption that the choice is about something outside you.

What Research Shows

Research by Loren Marks, David Dollahite and colleagues with 198 highly religious families found that faith shaped how people understood sexual boundaries, the purpose of sex, and the influence of culture and media. Research cannot establish doctrine. It does show how sexual choices get shaped by a larger sense of purpose rather than by rules alone.

Questions to Think About

• Where did I learn what my body is for?
• How would I treat it differently if I saw it as part of my eternal identity?
• Which messages are shaping the way I think about sexual freedom?

What You Can Do

Read Doctrine and Covenants 88:15 slowly this week, then choose one habit that better reflects what your body actually is. The essay behind this answer works through agency, consent and covenant in more depth.

Jesus Christ redeemed your whole soul, body included, and He can help you treat it with gratitude rather than either shame or carelessness.