Finding Freedom from Food Rules Through Faith with Travis Stewart, MA, LPC, NCC
"Truth is what leads to freedom. Truth will get us to a place of freedom and wholeness and healing."
There is a voice in our culture that tells you your worth is measured by what you eat, how much you weigh, and whether your body looks the way it's supposed to. You've heard it in the language of clean eating, in the shame spiral after a meal that didn't go as planned, in the quiet calculation of whether you've been "good" or "bad" today. If that voice sounds familiar, pull up a chair.
Today, Chrissy sits down with Travis Stewart, licensed professional counselor, recovery coach, and theologian, for one of the most honest and grounding conversations the show has had. Travis brings over two decades of clinical experience in Christian eating disorder recovery, along with a rare ability to hold the psychological and the scriptural together in a way that makes sense of both. He is a longtime member of the FINDINGbalance family, an original visionary for the Hungry for Hope conference, and a featured expert in the Lasting Freedom course. This conversation carries the weight of all of that.
Travis brings a phrase into this conversation that is worth sitting with: when a good thing becomes an ultimate thing, it will deceive us and enslave us. That is not just justification and comfort than anything on your plate, and this conversation points you straight toward it.
"We find freedom at the communion table, figuratively, literally, holistically, that is where we find it." — Travis Stewart
If this episode opened something in you, share it with someone who is still searching for the freedom that has always been available to them. You can also explore the Lasting Freedom course at findingbalance.com, where Travis's teaching has helped hundreds of people take these ideas from the head all the way down into real, lasting change.
We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please drop us an email at admin@findingbalance.com, send us a voice message via SpeakPipe, or you can also subscribe for more practical episodes coming your way.
More About Travis Stewart
Travis Stewart has spent over three decades thoughtfully integrating Christian faith, psychology, and personal growth in his work as a counselor, teacher, and speaker. At Covenant Seminary, he helps advance the seminary's mission to equip leaders for the broader church.
Travis is a member of the board of directors for Charis Eating Disorder Care, a Christian nonprofit treatment center dedicated to holistic healing for those with eating disorders. With a background as a licensed professional counselor since 2005, He brings a relational and creative approach to his work. Rooted in helping others understand their stories in light of God's redemptive grace and developing a deeper, honest trust of God. His work has largely focused on eating disorders, body image, and spiritual formation.
Travis was the visionary behind FINDINGbalance’s Hungry for Hope Conference, a pioneering faith-based event for those impacted by eating disorders. An engaging and thoughtful communicator, He has been invited to speak at institutions such as Pepperdine University, Baylor University, and Washington University, and has taught as a visiting instructor at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, where he lives with his wife, Susan. Together, they have two adult children, a son-in-law, and a grandson. For fun, Travis loves golfing, art, and taking a deep delight in anything his grandson says or does.
Resources Mentioned
"Phenomenally Created, Trading the Lies You Believe About Your Body for What God Says Is True" by Travis Stewart and Allie Marie Smith
Reflective Prayer - A guided prayer experience promoting hope, healing, and change through a vital connection with God.
Mentioned Scriptures
Matthew 26:26-29, Roman 8, Genesis
Connect with Travis Stewart
FINDINGbalance:
Facebook
Instagram
SpeakPipe – send us a voice message
CHRIST-CENTERED RESOURCES TO HELP YOU FIND FREEDOM
The Daily Vitamin eDevo: A free devotional with bite-sized truth emailed 5 days a week
Community Groups: Find connection with prayer groups and our Hello, Freedom! community.
Christian Treatment Finder: Connecting you with Christian providers experienced in treating eating issues.
Lasting Freedom Online Course: A Christ-centered, non-diet course to work through false beliefs about food and weight so you can live free from disordered eating and body image issues.
CREDITS:
Intro music by “MokkaMusic” – Old Jeans (Funk)
Production & Editing by Marketing With Wisdom
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The content in this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or prescribe a particular course of action. If you have, or suspect you may have, an eating disorder, please consult your healthcare provider. If you desire to receive faith-based care, visit ChristianTreatmentFinder.com to browse professionals with a Kingdom campaign against eating disorders.
More about the Old School Food Freedom Podcast
In today’s diet-culture society, food issues and body hatred have become the norm. But you were created to be FREE. Welcome to Old School Food Freedom, where we go back to the basics, God’s basics, for how we view food, our bodies, and our worth.
Hosted by FINDINGbalance Executive Director Chrissy Kirkman, this podcast features Biblically-sound experts, thought-leaders, artists, and everyday people who will inspire you to interrupt negative cultural soundtracks and rediscover God’s original design for your relationship with food and your body.
This show will deliver practical, faith-filled insights on how to break free from diet culture and body shame through the lens of scripture. If you’re looking for guidance on how to heal your relationship with food while deepening your faith, you're in the right place.
We’ll answer questions like
What does the Bible say about food freedom?
How can I overcome an eating disorder or disordered eating with Jesus?
What is the biblical perspective on diet culture?
How can I find peace with food as a Christian?
What does it mean to treat your body as a temple in relation to eating?
How can I break free from diet culture with Jesus?
How can I align my eating habits with biblical teachings?
What are the first steps to finding food freedom in Christ?
This podcast is for anyone ready to walk away from diet culture and into the freedom that Christ offers. Whether you’re recovering from an eating disorder, disordered eating, wrestling with body image, or simply craving a more peaceful relationship with food, this space was made for you.
If you want to experience true food freedom with Jesus, this podcast will give you the encouragement, truth, and tools to do just that.
The unedited transcript for this episode of Old School Food Freedom
Chrissy [00:00:31]: God adores you and wants you to experience the fullness of life without body hatred or bondage to dieting. The time is now to take a step toward the life you were created for. We're so glad you're here with us today. Let's get into today's episode. Hey, Travis. Welcome to the show.
Travis Stewart [00:00:52]: Hi, Chrissy. Thanks for having me.
Chrissy [00:00:54]: You're so welcome. I'm glad you're here. First, before we get started, I want to introduce you to our listeners. So this is Travis Stewart. He is a licensed professional counselor and recovery coach with a Master's of Arts in Counseling and a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Covenant Theological Seminary. Travis is the original visionary for Finding Balance's Hungry for Hope conference, and he has been a frequent featured expert in our Lasting Freedom course. He is also on our board of directors. Travis has spoken at schools such as Pepperdine University, Baylor, Washington University, and he currently works at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, where he lives with his wife.
Chrissy [00:01:34]: Travis, I want to first ask you a quick question. What old school item from back in the day that we don't use anymore do you miss? Is there something?
Travis Stewart [00:01:47]: I love technology, so I love all these advancements. I love, like, the latest gears and gadget and wireless anything, you know. So this is kind of a hard one for me. But one thing that came to mind for me was when I got my first stereo. Like, the stereo itself was, you know, 40 pounds and, you know, huge. But the speakers, the speakers back then, you know, were like two and a half feet tall, wooden boxes, you know, with this great, like, fabric over the. Those big speakers.
Travis Stewart [00:02:22]: Not only were they speakers, they were like cup holders on bookshelves. You know, you could put everything on them. You know what I mean? They were great. I miss old school speakers now.
Chrissy [00:02:33]: Are you a pioneer?
Travis Stewart [00:02:34]: I was. I had Pioneer. That was my.
Chrissy [00:02:36]: I knew it. I just. You were a pioneer guy. I knew. I knew it. And there was something like I liked. I really liked to adjust the levels. The levels, right. I was very heavy on the bass.
Travis Stewart [00:02:47]: Yes.
Chrissy [00:02:48]: It was very much like get the windows rattling, the louder the better. But just to crank the tunes up, especially Jesus music. I love it. Awesome. Okay, well, Travis, let's get into our interview today. Can you talk to us about how we use food and bodies in our culture?
How Our Culture Uses Food and Bodies to Justify and Comfort Ourselves
Travis Stewart [00:03:10]: Yeah. This is something I've really just begun to think about a little more recently in this particular format, in this way. I've thought a lot about food and bodies. I started working in the field with eating disorders in 2003, and I've worked as a clinician and also on an administrative side of treatment centers, and so done a lot of thinking. But my interest has always been sort of the integration of these issues with theology and psychology and trying to understand those things and what does scripture have to say about these topics and things? And so one of the ways to think about how we use food and bodies is to think about how does our culture do it. And then obviously, we're part of our culture, so we often do this. And so one of the ways I've thought about it recently is that we use food and bodies to justify ourselves and to comfort ourselves, and we can dive into that a little bit more. But justify meaning, save. How do I make myself? The word justification means to be made right. Or when you justify yourself, you're trying to say someone, oh, I was right. So the idea of justifying is to make yourself right with the world.Travis Stewart [00:04:22]: Another way of saying it is how are we trying to save ourselves? How are we trying to get right with the world around us, with others, with God? So how do we use food and bodies to do that? Is this idea that you're asking me about? Okay. All right, so let's start with an example of how we might use food or bodies to justify ourselves. And I think one of the ways that we do it, we're seeing it more and more in our culture, is by having the right diet. Whether we call that clean eating or in a more extreme version of clean eating, diagnostically we would call orthorexia. Right? Which is, I'm going to eat really rigidly and eliminate as much unhealthy or toxic foods that I can. And it results in a diagnosable eating disorder of anorexia. But one way we also do that without getting into a formal eating disorder.
Travis Stewart [00:05:19]: And so there's this great book that I read this year called Seculosity by David Zahl. Each chapter is on a different way that as our culture moves away from religion, we put religious principles into other parts of the culture. So, for example, you can become, like, religious about the right way to parent. You can become religious about your politics. Right. And all of the rules and the meaning and the significance that we have historically put into a faith, we now put into these other things. A great book, fascinating book.
Travis Stewart [00:05:57]: He has a chapter on food and how this religious approach to food is shaping us. I'll read a couple quotes from this book real quick. He says this: diet is no longer what we put in our mouths. It's a meticulous score sheet of personal and social righteousness, the measure by which we determine our own value and other people's. Right. So how clean am I eating? How right am I eating? Gives me a sense of being okay, being right. And that's the place of religion, that's the place of faith, is supposed to give us value and what's right.
Travis Stewart [00:06:31]: He says our national conversation about food is soaked in religious language. We think, we say things like, oh, I was bad because I had a brownie, or I'm not eating tonight because I'm being good. So we've attached these moral categories to eating, and that's one way that we use food to justify ourselves, to make ourselves feel better, to make ourselves feel okay. Right. It makes me think of a question when I've asked individuals who are struggling with anorexic behaviors, and if I ask them, like, if you were to practice those behaviors all day long and you were able to kind of meet all the rules that are in your head around food, like, don't eat this many calories or make sure you do this much exercise or all that, how would you feel at the end of the day? And the most common answer they would say is, I would feel accomplished, like I did something right. So there's this meaning that we've put into, in our culture to help ourselves feel okay about ourselves.
Chrissy [00:07:41]: Yeah. It feels like there's this comparison in social media, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook. Yeah, we are just looking to everyone else for that standard.
Travis Stewart [00:07:56]: Right.
Chrissy [00:07:57]: Of what we think that we should, you know, how should we measure up? How should we eat? How should we behave? How should we exercise and move our bodies and all of the — what should we wear? What should our relationship look like? And all of those things. We're not going to the word of God to see. But that's becoming our religion instead of going to the word of God for that spiritual nourishment.
Travis Stewart [00:08:22]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a significant way, one of the significant ways. And we've seen it become more mainstream in the last five to ten years. You know, you walk into a restaurant and you see advertisements about clean eating and things like that. And I don't want to dismiss all that. I don't want to dismiss that there are ways of eating that can be nutritious and you can eliminate, you know, there's — I'll leave that to the dietitians to sort out. Right.
Travis Stewart [00:08:50]: But the idea is that I'm finding my safety, my value, my meaning, my significance in the way I eat, and that becomes problematic for us. So as we're talking, I want to mention something that I think is significant here. As we talk through these issues, whether it's this one I've just mentioned or some of the other things that we're going to talk about, I'm aware that people listening might get triggered into feelings of shame or guilt or failure. And I just want to name that up front that I hope our conversation today can be really honest. We can name things that aren't helpful, that aren't working, or that might be even damaging, but we can do so without shame. Because when we get stuck in shame, it leads to isolation, it leads to depression, it leads to hiddenness, it leads to continuing to be stuck in the problem. Right?
Travis Stewart [00:09:40]: And so what we want to try to do is speak truth about these things without the shame. And so I encourage listeners, I encourage people when I talk about these things to let's just acknowledge the shame, reject it, set it to the side, and let's engage with the things truthfully. Right? Because truth is what leads to freedom. Truth will get us to a place of freedom and wholeness and healing. So I just want to mention that as we're kind of — we talked about this first item, so that's one way we justify ourselves with food. We do the same thing with bodies.
Travis Stewart [00:10:23]: Like, if I get to the right weight, if I get to the right size, if I get a six pack, right, then I'll be okay. Right. And so we're hoping that those things — we embed too much meaning into those things. Tim Keller. I love this phrase that I stole from Tim Keller. He talks about when a good thing becomes an ultimate thing, it will deceive us and enslave us.
Travis Stewart [00:10:50]: Right? So when we do something good, like eating nutritious food or going to the gym, when those are in the proper place, those are helpful, right? But when they get out of order, when they get out of place, when they become the ultimate thing, the thing we look to for value and hope and safety and identity, then they become destructive and then they begin to cause problems. And so let's keep good things as good things. But there's only one ultimate thing and that's trusting God.
Chrissy [00:11:23]: And it's finding balance. Finding the balance between going too far this way or too far that way. How do we keep it in perspective? How do we find the right balance where we can keep the food in its place and our hearts pointed to Jesus.
Using Food and Body Image to Comfort Ourselves: A Clinical Story
Travis Stewart [00:11:43]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. Let me give an example of what it looks like to comfort ourselves with food and body. So it's easy. We all understand how we use comfort food, right? We have a whole category of food called comfort food, right? That's a concept that most of us understand. But there's some other things we do to comfort ourselves. And I'll tell a quick story of a client.Travis Stewart [00:12:13]: I'll not going to share names. I'll change some of the details of the story to protect the innocent, right? So, but years ago, I began to ask clients to describe to me their ideal body image. And then once we sort of had described that ideal body image, I asked them to put that into a fantasy or like a scene. Like I would tell them sometimes, like paint me a picture or a movie scene where you would have this body and what would be happening in that scene, right? And so I had a client who — one of the first times I asked this, I asked her these questions and she began to describe a very, very low weight body, you know, extremely thin and skeletal, almost, you know, a very anorexic body. And that surprised me a little bit because I think I was still new in the eating disorder field. But I was also in my mind, the ideal body I pictured would be a movie star or, you know, the way our culture thinks about ideal bodies generally. But what I learned is that we have lots of different ideal bodies.
And so she described this and then I said, well, is there ever a scene in which you kind of imagine yourself with that body? And she said, yeah, I imagined that I would go to the gym and I would work out on the treadmill and I would work out and I'd work out and I'd work out, and then finally I would pass out.
Travis Stewart [00:13:44]: And I'm like, this is not like my typical fantasy, right? This is not what we normally think of. And I said, okay, tell me a little bit more. And she goes, well, and then there was a guy who went to my church who worked out at the same gym. And I imagined him helping me and calling the doctors and getting help and taking care of me. And it just all hit me — what she's longing for is to be cared for and nurtured, right?
Chrissy [00:14:19]: Yeah.
Travis Stewart [00:14:20]: So she's using her body image. She's manipulating the body image, the body, the shape and size of her body in order to meet a need of being comforted. Right. And we all have ideal body images that we think if we accomplish that or looked that way, or if we were with somebody or were chosen by somebody who looked like such and such, then we'd be okay. So that's a powerful motivating story. And I think it's important that we begin to understand and kind of look at our own — what are the fantasies and ideas that we have around body image and how are we using that to try to comfort ourselves or make ourselves feel safe?
Chrissy [00:15:06]: So do you consider comfort food different than emotional eating? Are they two different things? Are they similar?
Travis Stewart [00:15:15]: I think in my mind it's similar. I think it's similar in the sense. And I think sometimes comfort food's okay. I think sometimes I just need a bowl of ice cream, you know, but again, it's that when a good thing becomes an ultimate thing, or when does it become a loss of self control, or when does it interfere with my quality of life and my relationships? Does it lead to shame and hiding and guilt? Do I, the next morning, hate myself for that bowl of ice cream? Right. It's complex in that sense. Right. Food is a complex issue that takes a lot of wisdom and grace and compassion to sort yourself through.
Travis Stewart [00:15:54]: Right? And so binging, emotional eating, comfort foods — those, you know, there's blurry lines there. But sometimes having a piece of birthday cake at a friend's birthday party is the best thing to do because you're relating to them socially. Eating the cake is a social act at that point. It's a kindness act at that point. You're expressing being with them. Right. And so the food is used for different reasons at different times.
Travis Stewart [00:16:23]: And we need to be wise as we think about how we do that.
Chrissy [00:16:26]: That's good. It sounds like there's an element of balance to that as well, to emotional eating and comfort foods, that as long as they stay balanced and we don't go off — like I, so many times in my life just went off the deep end. And then the more I went off the deep end, there was more shame and guilt and self loathing and punishment. And how could I — sometimes punishment looked like going to the gym and staying there longer and working harder and hurting more the next day. And sometimes that looked like other things that I'm not going to describe. Like, I just, you know, the way I would beat myself up with and the horrible things I would say in my mind to myself.
Chrissy [00:17:13]: And it was this shame spiral.
Travis Stewart [00:17:15]: Well, and beating ourselves up is actually, I think, a form of comfort.
Chrissy [00:17:21]: Help us know, help me and the listeners know how that's comfortable, because that was my comfort zone. And I'm out of that. No, I'm not out of it. I'm getting out still.
Travis Stewart [00:17:30]: Right? Yeah, me too. Yeah. Shame is such an uncomfortable feeling that we will do anything to get out of it. So we might numb ourselves using a substance or a food or a behavior. Right. But we also will beat ourselves up. Beating ourselves up is a way of trying to cope with shame. It's a way of trying to minimize and deal with and make up for the shame.
Travis Stewart [00:17:55]: So in that sense, it's comforting in the sense of — it's helping me cope with these terrible feelings of shame. You know, it feels better to feel angry at yourself than it does to feel exposed. Does that make sense?
Chrissy [00:18:11]: That clicks. That clicks, Travis.
Travis Stewart [00:18:14]: Right.
Why We Struggle: The Objectification of Our Bodies
Travis Stewart [00:18:18]: So that's what we do with food and body, or that's some examples of what we might do with food and bodies in our culture. So let's shift to why. Like, I think there's lots of reasons why. But one of the reasons why — I want to focus on one of the reasons why we do this in our culture. One of the problems, and I would say one of the main problems that we have in our culture that results in eating problems, body dysmorphia and then other things like pornography and cutting is — and the reason is, is that we have objectified our bodies. We have turned our bodies into objects.Travis Stewart [00:18:55]: And that is not a biblical way of thinking. That is not how scripture describes the human person. Right. That history of separating body from self or spirit goes way back to the Greeks, if not before that. But just to give some context of what I mean when I say it's not biblical — if we go back to Genesis 1 and 2, God makes male and female in the garden as united whole persons, body, soul, spirit, all of that mixed together. And what we see throughout scripture is even though it uses terms like mind, spirit, soul, body as a whole, it's always talking about the whole person as one unit, right? And when we try to tease out these things too much, it gets unhelpful and it gets unbiblical.
Travis Stewart [00:19:57]: Because when you separate the body from the spirit, what do you have? You have death. So to separate the physical from the spiritual is unnatural. It's death. And we know that on one hand, right? If we talk about somebody that died, we say, well, where's the body? Right? We know that that is not the way things are. But when the body and spirit and soul and all that's combined, we say, where's the person? Right? So there is a wholeness that God has designed for us.
Travis Stewart [00:20:32]: And then the other truth that we find later in scripture — and we won't dive into all the scriptures on this, but it's referenced again and again throughout the New Testament — is that God's plan for humanity after the return of Christ is that we will be whole persons with bodies. Scripture talks about that our bodies will be made like his body. So anytime we separate the body from the person, we get into problems. And that's what the word objectification means, is to make something an object that should not be an object. So one of the ways that we do that is we begin to see our body as an object.
Travis Stewart [00:21:14]: When you objectify something, when you make a person into an object, then you're able to hate the person or yourself, right?
Chrissy [00:21:23]: Wow.
Travis Stewart [00:21:24]: Think about how this works politically, okay? When we talk about the other side, whatever side, but we talk about them, those bad people over there, we tend to use language like that. We tend to depersonalize our enemies and we talk about them as if they're not humans with stories, right? That allows us and leads to us hating those with whom we disagree, right? But when you get to know somebody's story and you hear their story, like, you may still disagree and you may still feel frustrated, but you've begun to humanize a person, right?
Chrissy [00:22:04]: And there's compassion that comes in and an empathy. Yep.
Travis Stewart [00:22:10]: Then another example of that is slavery. So one of the reasons slavery grew was that Africans were viewed by Europeans and Americans as non human. They were objects, they were property, which then allowed the slave trade to grow. Right. So anytime we do this, the problem is that we do this all the time in our culture. We objectify men, objectify women, women objectify women. And it results in this using of people rather than a caring for and a loving of somebody. And so I think one of the most surprising things is that we do that to ourselves.
Travis Stewart [00:22:51]: We see our bodies as a project to be worked on. And so I think I would imagine a lot of the listeners can relate to that.
The Lived Body vs. The Corporal Body: A Biblical View of Embodiment
So there's a German psychologist who has identified some helpful language around this idea. And I'll share those two things with you, and then we can go on to our last point. But he talks about how we experience our bodies in one of two ways. It's either the lived body experience or the corporal body experience. So let's start with the corporal body experience. That word corporal sounds a lot like the word corpse.Travis Stewart [00:23:35]: Right? Comes from the same Latin word, I'm assuming. Right. And what he's describing is when we experience our bodies as something other than us, alien to us, or broken about us. So an example — this happens when we feel ill, right? When we feel sick, when something's broken. The other way to experience our bodies he calls the lived body experience. And this is where we are fully present in our lives. And we're not aware of ourselves or our bodies as separate from us.
Travis Stewart [00:24:11]: Right. We're just inhabiting and united with our whole selves. Okay? And so here's an example. I don't know, five years ago, four years ago, I was playing basketball. It was the last time I played basketball. I have not played basketball. I've taken up a less dangerous sport for a man in his 50s. And I'm running, I'm playing, I'm passing the ball, having a great time.
Travis Stewart [00:24:38]: I'm in the lived body experience. I'm not thinking about my legs, I'm not thinking about my hands other than just using them to play, right? And then I reach for a ball, I'm defending a player, I reach for the ball and the ball hits my finger and it hurts. And I look down and my knuckle, which is still crooked, was going the wrong direction sort of. I mean, it just — and I'm like, that's not right. You know, and the pain hadn't set in yet, you know, I'm kind of doing this and like what is going on? And all of a sudden it went from I'm in this lived body experience to what's wrong with my finger. It's now an object, right.
Travis Stewart [00:25:18]: That I need — that needs attention, that needs fixing. That's normal, that's understandable, that's not problematic. But what the research shows is that the more we live in that corporal body experience, the more anxiety, the more shame, the more self hatred, the more eating disorders — all those things increase. Right. When you see your body as an object, it becomes an obstacle to you living life. Right. So if you see your body as a problem, then it's like it's hindering me from my social life. It's hindering me from —
Travis Stewart [00:26:02]: As opposed to just inhabiting who you are and living life.
Chrissy [00:26:08]: Absolutely. So an example of that could be all those times in the past where I couldn't find anything to wear and I was so stressed out about showing up and being in a larger body than I was the last time I saw friends that I haven't seen in two or three years. And I don't want to go because I don't want to be around all the food and want to enjoy it, but then feel like — like it's all these things and I'm criticizing myself. I'm not truly walking in freedom.
Travis Stewart [00:26:37]: Right.
Chrissy [00:26:37]: In that instance.
Travis Stewart [00:26:38]: And you're not in the lived body experience, you're in that corporal body experience. Seeing my body as a thing. Right. And it's a problem and it's getting in the way of me living life. Right. So what we need to do is we need to move towards encouraging and embracing those lived body experiences. And one of the ways you do that is through gratitude. Right.
Travis Stewart [00:27:01]: So expressing thanks for how your body functions. Right. There's an old term, it was used in design and architecture and it was called form versus function. And there were different debates at different times. And like think about the 60s where certain things like chairs looked super funky, right?
Chrissy [00:27:24]: Yeah.
Travis Stewart [00:27:24]: They were focused on the form of the chairs at that point. And then other chairs that just looked like a plain old chair — that's where they're focused on the function of the chair and there's beauty in both. We can appreciate chairs, fun looking chairs and things like that. And we can appreciate a sturdy chair to sit on. With bodies, the more we focus on form and appearance without a healthy appreciation for the functioning of the body — how my legs allow me to walk, how my arms allow me to hug or write or throw a ball — the more we, if we don't have a balance of that, then we're going to have a very unhealthy and unhelpful perspective on our bodies.
Chrissy [00:28:07]: Absolutely. Yeah. It kind of made me think of like, I love to roller skate. Absolutely love to roller skate. It's an old school fun thing that I miss from the past. But I might be in a body that's larger than the size I was in when I got the same pair of roller skates that I still wear today at 44 years old. I got them when I was 10 for Christmas and I can still wear them. They're white with pink rollers.
Chrissy [00:28:34]: And I love to skate and I feel free and alive. And I usually don't fall unless I trip over a kid or something. And then that's when I realize, okay, I'm falling a lot harder than I used to, but it's still okay. Like, it's that lived body experience — I'm living. I'm thanking my body. And when I'm out there, typically at first I think I get the hesitation of like, what if people? And then I'm just like, don't really care. I'm here to move my body. I'm here to get loose and have fun and just move.
Chrissy [00:29:13]: And so I, once I get out of those thoughts and out of that kind of that spiral, potential spiral, and then I can move and be free and be thankful that I have these legs that work and I have these arms that work and I have this feeling inside of me and I'm alive and I'm well and I'm having the best time ever. And it's really a different level of gratitude. But for so many years I could not, did not know how to get there. And so God has just done some really cool things. And you are part of that, Travis. Being in the Lasting Freedom, being an expert in the Lasting Freedom course and a leader there. There were so many things that you have taught me that have helped me find that freedom. So I want to thank you.
Chrissy [00:30:00]: Just side note, shout out.
A Story of Healing: What It Looks Like to Be Seen in Your Body
Travis Stewart [00:30:03]: Well, thank you. I'll share a quick story that's just such a powerful story. Then we'll go to the last part. But this is one of the best pictures I've ever seen of helping someone else embrace that lived body experience. And this is a story that one of my co-therapists at the first treatment center where I worked shared with me. And he told the story about a client who had been in treatment. She was there for six weeks and near the end of her treatment she was spending time with her husband and she hadn't seen him because she had been at treatment and it was across the country and all of this stuff. And they had some time to get away from the treatment center and have a weekend alone.Travis Stewart [00:30:43]: And they're in a hotel and they're getting ready to go out for that night to dinner or an activity or whatever they're doing. And she's getting ready and he's getting ready, and she finds herself standing in front of the mirror and she asked him the question that so many husbands dread, which is, honey, do I look fat? Oh, man, yes. And they had just spent an intensive weekend in therapy together and working on all this stuff. And you know, the husband could have responded in so many different ways. He could have said, I can't believe you're still struggling with this. You know, he could have been frustrated. He could have said, have you not learned anything in therapy? Or he could have said, you know, the therapist said we shouldn't talk about those things.
Travis Stewart [00:31:24]: There's all kinds of answers. Or he could have said, oh, you look great. And affirmed the way she looked. But what he did was he came up behind her and he stood behind her in the mirror and he puts his hands on her arms and he says, honey, I love your arms because with your arms you hold me. And honey, I love your legs because together we get to go walk in the park. And I love your belly because in your tummy you have carried our children. Like, just what a beautiful gift of him affirming her lived body experience and the functioning of her body and the humanity of her body. Right.
Travis Stewart [00:32:02]: And so we're invited to do that. You know, I think that's in a sense a picture of Jesus coming up behind us and telling us, you know, I love your arms. They're just the way I made them. You know, I love your legs because the way you walk and run and dance. And I love your hands because of how you serve people. I mean, I think those are the words he speaks over us.
Chrissy [00:32:23]: That's beautiful.
Travis Stewart [00:32:25]: Yeah, it's just such a great picture.
Where We Find Healing: Food, Body, and Freedom in the Last Supper
So that leads us to the third point. Where do we find healing? Right? What does this look like? And so I got thinking about this whole idea of how we try to justify ourselves and comfort ourselves with food and body. And I was thinking about how does that fit with the biblical story? And my mind was drawn to the story of the Last Supper, which is sort of not a scripture that I've ever tied in with body image and food before. But I got thinking about it and it was like, man, there were just some really cool things. So I'll share those with you, but I'm going to read Matthew 26, verses 26 to 29.Travis Stewart [00:33:13]: Now, as they were eating, Jesus took bread and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat, this is my body. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, drink of it, all of you, for this is the blood of my covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. So people might be going, what does this have to do with food and body image? But there's — I have four or five observations that I'll share here with you. So first we see that in this passage, Jesus affirms the goodness of eating and drinking. So when God thought about — for the Christian church, an activity that they could do to commemorate the work that he has done, the central work of the Christian faith, when he thought, how can I have them commemorate this in a way that's significant, that they practice on a regular basis. He said, you know what I think? Eating and drinking. Like, he affirms how good eating and drinking is by choosing it as the central sacrament of the Christian faith.
Travis Stewart [00:34:02]: We get so caught up in being spiritual. We get so caught up in living a spiritual life. And the Christian life, the biblical life is a very earthy life. It is embedded in eating and drinking and serving and getting our hands dirty. It is a very earthy life in that sense. And so that's just one thing we need to remember. God affirms not just the eating and drinking of the communion table, but of all eating and drinking. He says, when you do it, just do it for the glory of God. In other words, keep me in mind when you're eating and drinking.
Travis Stewart [00:35:10]: So that's one. Two is that Jesus affirms the goodness of the body. So we see that in the incarnation, God took on a body, he became flesh. That in itself is like the greatest affirmation of the human body that we can have, is that God said, I will take one on and become flesh myself. And then it becomes the central means of our salvation. His body given for us is the center part of the Christian story. And so he affirms the goodness of bodies through this. And then he tells us to use our bodies as we do this communion and remember him.
Travis Stewart [00:35:53]: Another thing he does is he just affirms community at the table. Like he wants people eating and drinking together so much that he makes it this sacrament for the church. He wants people — and we do it, you know, we tend to do these little tablets and little — especially with COVID, you know, we got these little and early on — and some other traditions outside of where you might be familiar, but they do much more of a meal. It's more eating and drinking. It's more — in the early church it was much more of a meal.
Travis Stewart [00:36:22]: And so there's this symbolism and significance of the meal, but community at the table — so important in the New Testament. Which leads me to this one, which might be my favorite one, is that we will eat and drink in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus tells us here, he says, I'm not going to drink again of this fruit of the vine until I drink it anew in the kingdom of heaven with you. One of the first things we will do is have — it's called the wedding feast of the Lamb. We're going to go to a wedding feast. One of the first things we do in heaven is have a feast. And the —
Travis Stewart [00:36:56]: One of the first things Jesus says we do when we will see him is have a glass of wine together. Let that blow your mind for a minute. It's relational. It's significant, it's holy. It's affirming our humanity. It affirms our dependence on Him. Our bodies can't exist without food and drink. All of these things are beautifully built into this whole idea.
Travis Stewart [00:37:22]: And then the last two things, I'll kind of combine them together. We try to justify and comfort ourselves with food and body. But what Jesus is telling us here in this passage is that it's his body who justifies us. It's his body who makes us right with the world and with God — sacrificed on the cross. That's the central story, right? Is he is making us right through his body, not your body. You don't get right with the world and with God through your body. You get right through his body and that it was given for you.
Travis Stewart [00:37:58]: And what great comfort that is, what amazing comfort that is, that's where our comfort and our justification come from. And when we remember that and we lean into that and we trust that we find more freedom. So we find freedom at the communion table — figuratively, literally, holistically, that's where we find it.
Chrissy [00:38:21]: That's incredible. I am at a loss for words, because just that passage alone, I just feel like we read that and we glaze over and glance over the depth of that. I have never looked at that and really thought about the food and the community and the connection and how it all ties in to me — that it's always in my whole life been so separate from the spiritual.
Travis Stewart [00:38:53]: Right.
Chrissy [00:38:53]: Yeah. I mean, I can't even put — thank you, Travis, for putting it into words.
Travis Stewart [00:38:58]: Well, and that's the way — I mean, that is the result of our intellectual, philosophical history of the Western culture that goes back to Plato and Socrates and others who did see this division. And then we've carried it on, and then the church has been terrible about it. We over spiritualize things and we neglect the physical world around us, which God, when he created in Genesis, he creates the world, and he says, it's good, it's so good, and he's committed to redeeming it. Romans 8 tells us he's not just redeeming us, he's redeeming all of creation. Right. This is all really good. And so as we engage with the physical world, with our physical bodies, God is deeply pleased.
Closing: Takeaways and What True Freedom Looks Like
Chrissy [00:39:45]: Travis, this is so good. Thank you for sharing all of this deep, incredibly powerful information with us. So we're needing to wrap up our time here. You told me about something that you do with students.Travis Stewart [00:40:01]: Yeah.
Chrissy [00:40:02]: In your class.
Travis Stewart [00:40:03]: Right. Well, it's fun. It's something like — this is something I learned back when I was in campus ministry, the campus minister that the staff guy used to do. And so I've started using it when I teach classes sometimes at the seminary or other places. And that is asking people for their takeaways. I will say, okay, that's the end of my teaching. But before you leave, we need to hear five takeaways. And I make five people speak up before they leave. So that'll be my question for you. What's a takeaway for you from our time together?
Chrissy [00:40:41]: Well, the first thing that I think about is I go back to the corporal and I'm just reflecting back on how often I live even still. I mean, I've done a lot of healing and I'm still struggling in a lot of areas. So I still find myself having those corporal experiences where I'm very much — I find myself punishing myself really hard, like severely more than I would anyone else. So to kind of — I just need some time to, I think, to soak that in and.
Travis Stewart [00:41:22]: Yeah.
Chrissy [00:41:22]: And pray through — Lord, what are you showing me here? Where are some areas I need to extend myself more grace? There's a root there that I'm praying that God will continue to expose those negative spiritual roots and replace them with his truth. And so this is like one next step of replacing those lies and what's not working with what God says and speaking what is true in my life. So thank you for that. Yeah.
Travis Stewart [00:41:52]: So good. Well, my takeaway from our time today was just, I'm really grateful that you're doing this podcast and getting this information out to people and very thankful for your leadership at Finding Balance. So thanks so much for having me. Yeah.
Chrissy [00:42:05]: Okay. And our final question. Would you just describe to us the last time you really experienced true freedom? What did that look like?
Travis Stewart [00:42:18]: Two thoughts came to mind for me. I'll share one old one when I think of true freedom and then I think of a recent one. So an old one was when I was a kid, my dad was in the military and we lived in Germany and we lived in a small town called Landstuhl. Some people who are military kids might know where that is. But I lived off base and literally a mile and a half from my house was a castle. And so as a 10 year old kid, I got to play in a castle. And that is just — there was just so much freedom.
Travis Stewart [00:42:57]: I hadn't hit the teenage angst yet. And I just loved being able to go and experience that freedom. And so that's an old school one. A new school one for me was this summer. My wife and I celebrated 30 years of marriage. And so we went to Jamaica and it was like we were on a resort. I mean, just freedom in the water for no work for a week. It was amazing.
Travis Stewart [00:43:25]: It was awesome. So it was a little taste of heaven. We and some friends went with us. It was so good.
Chrissy [00:43:32]: Oh, well, congratulations. That's a big milestone. That's awesome. I love it. Travis, thank you so much for being on the show and for all you do for Finding Balance and for the Kingdom of Heaven. It's just so great to know you and learn from you. I'm always learning something new from you. And for our listeners, thanks for listening and you can find out how to connect with Travis in our show notes.
