“Do you think of your life as essentially stationary unless compelled by some great force into action? Or do you think of yourself as active, moving, working, often beckoned to stop or sit to address some particular task? Do you think of physical activity as an opportunity—to be happy, make others happy, and even draw fresh admiring attention to Christ?”

It is a sedentary age. It is true for so many of us that if we do not deliberately pursue opportunities to exercise, we can remain unhealthily static. Those of us whose work is with words and whose primary tool is a keyboard may face special challenges in this regard. Personally, I know it would be possible for me to spend the great majority of my life almost entirely motionless. I know it would be possible, but I also know it would be neither wise nor healthy.

As a pastor and writer, David Mathis is in much the same position as I am—a person whose work requires little activity and who therefore must be deliberate about exercise. To counter the temptation toward inactivity, he wanted to do more than merely enroll in a program or force himself into a routine. Instead, he wanted to develop a theological basis for exercise and then begin to act upon it. The results are a short but powerful little book titled A Little Theology of Exercise.

Alongside breathing, eating, thinking, feeling, and speaking, one of the great fundamentals of human life is movement. Bodily activity is so basic, so obvious, often so assumed, that we easily overlook what a veritable superpower it is. Yet movement is one vital aspect of our enduring human nature that our present age threatens to undermine.

Indeed, it does. Therefore, “Our need is not for conserving calories but for putting to good use the abundance of calories we consume (almost) without thinking.” This matters because “to the degree that our default is to move as little as possible—rather than to move freely, eagerly, and enjoyably—we undermine or inhibit some essential dynamics in the Christian life. As Christians, we cannot content ourselves with taking our bearings from our sedentary society. Our modern excesses are not just of human concern but Christian concern.”

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