Christian Bodybuilder Urges Faithful to Honor Physical Health
Christians are exhorted to care for their physical bodies, which are the temple of the Holy Spirit. However, some leaders have criticized bodybuilding for putting too much emphasis on the flesh.
Hunter Sprague, a Christian bodybuilder from Texas, disagrees. After spending time in Christian ministry, Sprague tapped into his personal passion for exercise and strength-building to launch Monolith Movement, a coaching and mentorship platform that helps men balance faith and fitness.
“Our bodies matter, our physical material world matters — it was created,” he told Fox News. “That is the natural created order — if the Lord didn’t desire for you to have a body, you wouldn’t have one.”
In Sprague’s view, exercise and fitness are forms of embracing the control that the Lord has given humans over their bodies.
“This is primarily a matter of stewardship,” he said. “How are you stewarding the fact that you have a functioning body? How are you stewarding the fact that you’ve been given all of these tools and resources and abilities? What are you doing with it for the benefit of others, for your benefit, as you seek to love the Lord and delight in him, and have that sense of peace and hope and resilience?””
In his personal fitness routine, Sprague focuses on a mix of strength training and cardio. “For a lot of people, fitness equates to just weight loss, but if you’re losing weight without building muscle, you’re shooting yourself in the foot,” he said
For anyone looking to honor their body and also honor the Lord, Sprague said it’s important to recognize that the physical being matters but that it will never be the main source of happiness or peace.
“It’s hard to be satisfied, it’s hard to get to a place where you’re like, ‘I’m done, I made it,’” he said. “There’s always going to be this sense of `there’s more to go, there’s more to do.’ My identity, my worth, my value, isn’t wrapped up in what I achieve physically. Rather, this process is just a joy in itself.”
–Alan Goforth
