New Adult Education Class starting Sunday April 19th
Whole Selves: Loving Yourself and Your Neighbor
We have many words that separate our faith-Selves from our physical-Selves. Soul vs body or beliefs vs. brain, to name a few. But what if God wants us to love with our Whole Selves? What if the way we care for our own physical needs is one of the ways we express love to God?
Many of us have learned to divide our lives into parts—spiritual and physical, inner and outer, sacred and ordinary. We pray, we believe, we serve… and yet the ways we eat, we move, and we respond to stress often feel completely separate from those fundamental actions of faith. At the same time, we carry quiet assumptions about ourselves: that our worth is tied to what we can do, that needing help is weakness, or that caring for ourselves is somehow less important than caring for others. But what if none of that is true? What if we are not meant to live divided lives at all?
In this four-week study, we will explore what it means to live as “whole selves”—people whose bodies, relationships, and daily habits are all held within God’s life. Drawing on Scripture and insights from medicine, we will examine how change actually happens, why we are not meant to live alone, what it means to be precious in God’s sight, and how that truth reshapes the way we treat both ourselves and others. This is not a course about trying harder or becoming better versions of ourselves. It is an invitation to see more clearly, to receive care more freely, and to live more fully as people who already belong to God—“for in him we live and move and have our being.”
The syllabus below shows a brief introduction to each week’s material, including vignettes about what it means to look at ourselves and others as Whole Selves.
Week 1 (April 19): Acts 36-47 “I See”
Repent. To change ways. To turn around and go in the opposite direction. The first and most important step when making a change is awakening to the need for change. Many of us have been confronted with this need in our doctors’ offices. We sit in uncomfortable chairs and too-bright fluorescent light like creatures being dissected. Habits we minimize or try to hide are laid bare by our test results. We receive the verdict as a double-blow- first as a judgement of our actions and then as a consequence: “Your blood pressure is too high, you’re at risk of a heart attack,” “You’re smoking has given you lung cancer,” or “Your stress gave you an ulcer.” These are inevitably followed by a call to action—“you need to exercise more” or “you need to quit smoking” or “you need to find healthy ways to relax.” But changing behaviors isn’t easy. The next step in the conversation feels like shaming- “Just start with a daily walk” or “just don’t pick up the cigarette” or “just take the time to breathe and notice the beautiful things” which all make it sound like willpower is the primary issue. If we just tried harder, we wouldn’t do the thing that makes us sick. We feel guilty. We resolve to try harder. But the reality is that the brain needs habits to conserve energy. Habits are like an autopilot- things that the brain and body do relatively automatically. And many times our health patterns are the results of unnoticed habits. When we’re facing our doctor holding our cholesterol results we may see it as a result of eating fast food multiple times per week. But perhaps the hidden habit that sets us up to make that choice is our morning routine that prevents us from packing a lunch. Change starts with attention, not willpower. Just as the Believers in Acts celebrated together in happy harmony, our study this week will look at “interrupting the autopilot” and awakening to change, not from a place of judgement, but from a place of joy.
Week 2 (Apr 26): Acts 6:1-7, Psalm 23 “I am Not Alone”
There are two patient fears that I hear overwhelmingly more than any others. I’ve always imagined my patients would be most anxious about concrete things—"I don’t want to be in pain,” or “I don’t want to suffer,” but believe it or not I almost never hear those concerns. The top two are actually “I don’t want to be a burden” and “I don’t want to lose my independence” (often phrased as “I don’t want others telling me what to do”). Today’s lessons give a radical reframing of these two key concerns. In Acts 6, the early church recognizes the need of a subgroup and reorganizes itself to meet those real physical needs. In Psalm 23, we look to God in a posture of dependence and trust. Acts 6 describes structuring our church community to ensure all are included and cared for, but it is also clearly describing the widows’ act of faithfulness as bringing forward their need and being willing to receive care. Psalm 23 also shows that we are not self-sustaining beings and that needing help is not a failure, it is part of being human. Both of these passages show us that as people of God, we are neither “independent” nor “a burden.” We are meant to live in community with each other both giving and receiving according to our gifts and our needs. To think of ourselves only as “givers” in our community and not also as “receivers” is to place ourselves on God’s level. Instead, we must see ourselves as both co-creators with God and dependent on God and each other.
Health, therefore, is not an individual project—it is relational with each other and structural through our community systems. We are not designed to manage nutrition, stress, illness, and aging alone. In his groundbreaking research on longevity, Dan Beuttner found that the most critical predictors of living past the age of 100 had to do with relationships—specifically living in communities that valued every member and having community systems in place to monitor each others’ well-being. And here’s the beautiful paradox: when we respect and value each other, and allow ourselves to be respected, valued, and cared for, words like “burden” and “dependent”—including the fear and shame that comes with them—melt away. God calls us to be active participants in these communities of interdependence. And this spiritual direction is supported by science. The body is not built for chronic self-reliance under stress. When we feel unsupported, stress hormones (like cortisol) stay elevated, increasing inflammation and slowing healing. When we feel supported, the nervous system relaxes, blood pressure lowers, and resilience improves.
Our study this week will look at both sides of the equation- both giving and receiving care.
Week 3 (May 3): 1 Peter 2:2-10 “I am Precious”
I was a wreck. Her labor pains were every few minutes now. She’d done this multiple times before, but this was my first time. I was going to deliver her baby. Up until now, she had still managed to smile reassuringly despite her pain, give me words of encouragement, even held my hand reassuringly when I had lamely tried to do that for her. But now, the first anxieties were crossing her face. She seemed to be asking, “You ARE capable of this, right?”
Was I? I wasn’t sure. I had never birthed a child. I had never delivered a child. Of course I had been in the room while it happened, had seen what the Doctor is supposed to do and how the Doctor was supposed to behave. But I had never been the Coach, the Catcher, the Gripper, the Usherer of a new life. You would think my mind would be racing with thoughts of making sure I did right by both the baby and the mother, but no. If I am honest, my deepest thoughts and anxieties were about myself. What am I doing here? I don’t deserve to be here. I’m not worthy to share this most precious moment.
And then suddenly, it was over. I had automatically reduced the baby’s nuchal cord, the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around his neck preventing his first breath. His mother was struggling to sit up, to catch a glimpse of him as he ripped a massive, lusty cry. This little baby had an immediate, unquestioned preciousness despite his total dependence. He had no “earned” value, had not yet made any “contributions” to society, and yet anyone who has been in a Delivery Room feels the unquestionable holiness of a precious, new life. In that moment, I also realized my own immediate, unquestionable pricelessness. I have no “earned” value. My value comes from the inherent treasure God made in me. I am a Treasure. I am Precious. God created me, and all of us, as inherently full of worth.
Why do we miss that insight as we age? Why do we insist that needing someone else’s care is somehow a sign of weakness? Why do we assume that we are always meant to be the care-givers, and that to be a care-receiver is a sign of weakness? Needing care does not diminish worth- as with a newborn, it often reveals it.
This week we will examine how we view our own worth, and how to care for ourselves as inherently worthy beings.
Week 4 (May 10): Acts 17:22-31 “Living My Whole Life”
I was struggling for breath. Tears popped one by one as I tried to force the air that wouldn’t go, blurring my vision even further. I was helpless, as the people in the operating room raced against my dropping oxygen. My last thoughts as I lost consciousness weren’t of panic or fear. Instead, I deeply felt God’s Presence, and the love of everyone in the room. They didn’t know me. They didn’t know my accomplishments, or my beliefs, or my choices. They didn’t know if I was a “good” person or a “bad” person. But they respected me. They breathed for me when I couldn’t breathe for myself. I always saw dignity as something that I generated and then presented (like a parading peacock) to the world. In that moment I realized dignity was something given to me, even when I had nothing to offer.
We must go out in this world and show others their dignity. Their political beliefs, their able-ness, their IQ, their “goodness” or their “badness” are all irrelevant. The secret I learned in that most terrifying moment is that there is no “us.” There is no “them.” There are only God’s beloved creatures, sharing this Earth together, and some folks know how to bring that honor to every person they meet. I want to be a person who can do that. Each of us Worthy. Each of us Needy. Paul is saying that not only do we all share a common human experience, we all live with and within God’s presence—“in him we live and move and have our being.”
This week we’ll focus on what it means to “live and move and have our being” in God. How do I live as someone who is precious, among others who are also precious, all within God?
Dr. Sarah Vick is a Family Medicine physician and a candidate for ordination in the Presbyterian Church-USA. She graduated from the military’s medical school- Uniformed Services University at the beginning of her 26-year career as a medical officer in the Air Force. A lover of learning, Dr. Vick also collected a Masters in Business Administration from George Washington University in Washington, DC, a Masters of Divinity from Iliff University in Denver, Colorado, and a Masters in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. She has just started a Doctor of Divinity at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, where she is studying Creative Writing and Public Theology. Teaching the “Whole Selves” course is part of Dr. Vick’s larger mission to break down silos between the fields of health and theology.
