In Fit for What?, Andrew Borror offers a cultural exegesis of modern fitness culture, seeking to answer the questions: What story does fitness culture tell about the body? What vision of the good life does it assume? And how might the person of Christ, who neither lived a sedentary life nor trained in a modern gym, reshape the way we think about exercise, health, and embodiment?
In a culture saturated with self-optimization, body image pressure, and performance-driven fitness ideals, many believers find themselves grappling with the pressures and ideals of contemporary fitness trends. Rather than treating the body as a machine to optimize or an image to manage, Fit for What? calls Christians to receive their creaturely, limited bodies as gifts from God, and to care for them in ways that honor him and serve their vocations in community.
Drawing on biblical and christological anthropology, Borror argues that fitness culture is not guilty of loving the body too much; it is guilty of not loving the body enough. By chasing an abstract ideal of physical perfection, it fails to appreciate the actual bodies of actual people.
What you'll find in Fit for What?:
- A Christian ethic for physical fitness that honors God and the human body rather than exalting or idolizing the self
- A vision of Christ's human body that helps us make discerning decisions about our own bodies, seeing both exercise and our limitations as a gift
- Examination of the stories, values, and assumptions embedded in contemporary fitness trends, equipping readers to engage them discerningly
- An ideal resource for college and seminary courses on ethics, health, and the body
This book revitalizes wonder at the gift of our own unique bodies without denying the difficulties of embodied life in a broken world. Fit for What? is essential reading for Christian athletes, fitness enthusiasts, students, or anyone wanting to think deeply about how their faith informs physical exercise.
