Human beings ignore their skin consistently. Like smells, we generally agree that the best reminder is “none at all”. Through it we receive thousands of signals, warnings and pleasures, and yet our habit is to lie to ourselves, readily buying into the fantasy that we are made up of one piece of flesh, the skin being the only visible part. We don’t like blood, muscle, or sinew. We tolerate the idea of bones, but only so long as we can’t see them. We let skin seem absolute so we don’t have to parse the messy details.

I have dandruff. It’s fairly common, and easily treatable, but I’m lazy. So every few weeks when I haven’t used my medicated shampoo enough, my scalp dries and the skin falls off. It’s gross, but manageable. I also have Eczema, a product of my mother’s fair skin. It’s genetic, and as an autoimmune disorder, incurable. The best I can do is treat the infection enough so that I don’t feel the symptoms. But medicine Is expensive, and I’m young. So there are seasons where I don’t treat it. Isolated to one part of the body, It’s not bad. One itchy red rash. Not quite as itchy as poison ivy, but close sometimes. 

But Eczema spreads.

The more you itch, the farther it spreads, week to week, month to month, and without medication, there’s little to nothing to stop it. As it spreads your skin dries, cracks, peels. And of course, you’re always scratching. The effect is that you are constantly shedding skin, constantly ripping it off. You feel like a leper. Like some horrible flesh eating bug has swarmed you, only as you scratch, you realize, YOU are the virus.

The other side effect, is that wherever you go, you leave your skin behind. To the untrained eye, it’s like dust. Dust on your keyboard, on your pants, on the couch. Piles of dust everywhere I go. Matched with the dandruff, I leave dust everywhere.

We forget a lot of times that dust is mainly made up of human skin. Perhaps it’s our unique disgust for our bodies. Perhaps it’s some fantastic mass delusion, directing all of us to believe that dust is the cosmic essence of time left behind as it passes. Perhaps we just forget.

As disgusting and as socially awkward as my conditions are, they are an excellent daily reminder of a truth all of us must face and all of us are running from: that is, we are decaying. Our cells replicate, but as we get older, the genetic code gets screwed up more and more. We become more imperfect versions of ourselves day to day, our bodies literally shrivelling up and collapsing beneath us. 

Human beings are not made still in the plastic box. We are created mangled, warped, and defective. Because the truth that we continue to deny with every breath is that we are not human. We are instead, humanity with the best parts taken out, the cereal without the toy, a remote without batteries. We are dead, and our bodies proclaim our death with loud announcement. We are dead, each and every one of us ripped from our spiritual nature and afraid to admit it.  We are dead.

Christ has brought some of us back to life, yet still our living bodies cannot coexist with a world that is still a corpse. So we wait like caterpillars writhing in cocoons, wailing till we are no longer surrounded by death. 

A denial of death is not a phobia of inevitability, it is a willing ignorance of our life. By refusing to believe that we are dead, we also refuse to accept we could be more alive. It’s like our skin. If we pretend that we are simply skin and bone, then we ignore the myriad of parts and processes that make our body truly functional. We are not made to be hedonist creations, roiling about in their simplistic flesh. We were made to be  spiritual powers, that shape both the physical and non-physical realities around us. Jesus walked on water. Jesus turned water into wine. Jesus made food appear from nowhere. And yes, Jesus was God, but he also said that his followers would do GREATER things than these. 

The first step as with most things is to admit we have a problem.

It is to admit that we are either dead, or at least living like it.

We are made to be more than skin.