The Human Body: A Slightly Used Vehicle

I bought a new car not long ago. By “not long ago,” I mean sixteen months, which in car years should still count as youthful. Unfortunately, my car has already acquired the expression of a middle-aged man who has seen too much traffic, too many potholes, and too much enthusiasm from its owner. The engine is fine, the wheels are still attached, and the horn retains its theological confidence. But the body has needed repeated visits to what I call “car hospitals” for denting and painting. If there were a loyalty card for such shops, I would probably qualify for a free bumper massage.

My wife, who represents the voice of wisdom, economy, and inconvenient truth, once asked, “Why do you keep spending money on denting and painting? The car still drives.” This was difficult to answer because she was entirely right. The car could move, turn, stop, and even look respectable from a generous distance. But I could not bear the sight of its small scars. A scratch on the car somehow felt like a scratch on my reputation. I realised, not for the first time, that some men do not merely own cars; we enter into emotional partnerships with them.

 

Then came the uncomfortable discovery: my car and I are ageing together. Every visit to the barber has become a medical consultation disguised as grooming. The young man cutting my hair looks at my head with professional concern and asks, “Sir, shall I colour it?” He says it gently, as though announcing early-stage rust. Sometimes he offers a facial massage too, perhaps to restore showroom condition to the front panel. I politely decline, partly because I am spiritual, and partly because I am afraid, he may discover more structural damage than he can manage.

 

We laugh, but an entire industry exists to help us hide the dents and fading paint of the human exterior. Grey hair can be negotiated with. Wrinkles can be softened. Tired eyes can be persuaded to look alert. Skin can be brightened until it appears to have had a good night’s sleep even when the rest of the person has not. We call it grooming, wellness, self-care, or maintenance, depending on how much we paid. The truth is simpler: most of us are trying to keep the outside from revealing what the inside already knows.

 

Of course, the real problems begin below the bonnet. Friends my age now speak casually about procedures that sound less like medicine and more like automobile service. One has had heart “plumbing” done. Another has had joints replaced with mechanical parts. At dinner, we discuss bypasses, implants, lenses, knees, hips, and cholesterol with the enthusiasm once reserved for cricket scores. The sentence “Which part is next?” is no longer entirely a joke. We are becoming a community of slightly used vehicles, still roadworthy but increasingly dependent on specialist workshops.

 

Health care, thankfully, is a wonderful gift. Doctors repair, restore, support, replace, and sometimes perform what looks to the patient like holy engineering. I am grateful for every surgeon, physician, nurse, therapist, technician, and pharmacist who helps bodies function again. But there is a danger in the language we use. If we speak only of parts, systems, mechanisms, and repairs, we may begin to imagine that the person is nothing more than an assembled machine. A patient can become a case, a body can become a project, and suffering can become merely a technical problem awaiting the correct tool.

 

The irony is that while we sometimes treat bodies like machines, we also treat machines like bodies. We give technology human names and bodily parts. A processor becomes the brain, cameras become eyes, microphones become ears, wires become nerves, sensors become skin, motors become muscles, memory becomes memory, and the power supply becomes the heart. My phone recognises my face, but it does not actually know whether I am tired, guilty, or pretending to be unavailable. My laptop occasionally freezes, but unlike me, it can be restarted without coffee.

 

These metaphors are useful because we understand the world first through our bodies. The body is our original school. Through it we learn hunger, balance, pain, fatigue, touch, dependence, and limitation. So when technology becomes complex, we borrow familiar language. Still, a machine that sees does not behold. A machine that speaks does not love. A machine that stores information does not remember with gratitude or regret. A machine that responds does not bear responsibility. Technology may imitate human functions, but imitation is not personhood. My car may have character, but it does not have a soul, even if the repair bill sometimes makes me pray over it.

A deeper understanding helps us keep our humour and our seriousness in the right places. The human body is not disposable packaging for the soul, nor is it merely a biological machine with replaceable parts. It is God’s crafted creation, formed from dust and given life by His breath. It bears dignity because humanity is made in God’s image. It matters because the Word became flesh. The incarnation is God’s great affirmation that bodies are not embarrassing accessories but sacred places of presence, weakness, touch, tears, suffering, service, and hope.

 

So perhaps I will continue to take my car for denting and painting, though I may do so with less theological intensity. And perhaps I will also learn to look at ageing bodies - my own included - with more kindness. We are not showroom models. We are embodied persons: scratched, repaired, fading, patched, beloved, and still on the road by grace. The car may need paint, polish, and replacement parts. The human body needs care, honour, patience, and hope. And one day, God will not merely touch up the paintwork; He will make all things new.