Why Does Physical Touch Matter?

Images, Trauma, and Embodied Worship

We all want to be loved. Not the idea of us, and not simply through words about or by us. We, in our totality, want to be welcomed, known, and loved. Under normal conditions, we experience this holistic love through touch and communication, both of which are vital to our humanity. The countless needs of all human bodies are intentional design elements of the way we were made—not to be independent loners but to be connected to each other in a web of interdependence and relationships; not ghostly, disembodied souls but dust-derived, Spirit-breathed creatures. And this is good! Our physicality opens us up to interactions with each other and with the world around us. And even the limitations of that physicality become elements of our creativity. Being human has always been an embodied state, and that has always been a good, not a bad, thing.

Even dependence, contrary to the individualist philosophy of our culture, is part of the blessing of human existence. The first creation account (Gen. 1) describes the entire material world as “good,” but the second account (Gen. 2) examines the creation of humanity in two parts. When it considers Adam as a creature to himself, “alone,” the text declares this “not good” (Gen. 2:18). Adam’s body is not bad; his aloneness is the problem. So God responds by bringing Adam another like him, another who bears a body like his, but different—not the idea of another but the bodily presence of Eve. Adam experiences the goodness of creation when he connects his dependence with this other. We are designed for communion with each other, and our physicality supplies a medium for that communion. This communion itself exemplifies a kind of need: for God, our neighbors, and the earth. Genesis shows that physicality and its corresponding needs are not a flaw but a good element of God’s original design.