Monday, February 21, 2011

obese.

I am obese. I take no pride in it, but as of today, my body mass index is high and I am considered obese. I had a scare three months ago with respect to my blood pressure and my doctor put me on a strict diet. Since then I have lost some weight and have begun to feel much better, my goal is yet distant, but achievable. What has taken place in my life is a change of lifestyle, not just in what I eat, but how and why. Initially this change in lifestyle was borne out of a fear for my health, but as the months have come and gone, I've begun to think seriously about the greater ramifications of my health with respect to my spiritual life.

It is sinful to smoke. I've "known" this my entire life. I've often heard Christians expound on the evils of cigarettes and cigars. I've even, at one time, heard it asked if someone could really be a Christian and smoke tobacco? Inevitably the following passage is quoted:

"Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own," ~ I Corinthians 6:19

The idea here is not that the act of smoking is a sin, but that the sin is in the willful destruction of the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Our body is a valuable and delicate gift.

"Every act of fornication, adultery, or any other sin is committed by the believer in the sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, where God dwells." ~ John MacArthur

Our bodies are surrendered to Christ when we accept and serve Him at the cross. The Holy Spirit indwells us and we become living sacrifices to Him. Our bodies are not our own, we are to be stewards of them as we seek to serve God with the time we have on Earth.

"Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food"—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." I Corinthians 6:13

It is widely accepted that smoking is very damaging to the human body. And, I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who would contradict the idea that the damage to the body by the smoking of cigarettes is sinful.

Is it sinful to be obese? This is where walls go up, and in favour of polite interaction and not offending a brother we begin to make excuses. The time has come that we must get beyond our pride and have conversations with one another that are true and compelling. Certainly there must be love, but ultimately there should be truth. As Western Christians, we have become far too comfortable with telling lies to each other (and ourselves) for the sake of propriety. It's time for some hard truth! If you find yourself offended by the content of this article, please choose to instead be challenged and edified.

It is true that we are to be good stewards of all we are given in this life, including our physical selves. Yet, somehow we have become very comfortable living lives that are very much in tune with the world instead of with Christ. We have adopted humanism into every aspect of our lives, right down to our diet.

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Romans 12:1-2

This new diet prevents me from having an overabundant quantity of sodium. Salt, harmless enough in moderate quantities. The average adult requires only about 1500mg (1.5 grams) of sodium a day to meet dietary needs. So, for the past three months I've been striving to live within that daily guideline. And I've made some startling discoveries. Salt is in almost everything, if it didn't grow on it's own and go directly into a pot on your stove it likely has some amount of salt in it. The biggest culprits of salt are pre-packaged foods, even store bought bread has unhealthy levels of sodium. As we've discovered this, we've found ourselves requiring a lot more time for preparing food in our home. Unable to use pre-prepared foods we've had to purchase more raw materials and prepare every meal from scratch. This got me to thinking about just why there is so much of a drive towards prepared foods in the supermarket. There's a lot, and there's more every week. ("The Paradox of Choice" by Barry Schwartz outlines the insanity of excess in Western Society. I highly recommend giving it a read)

We live in a society driven to be busy, there is so much to do now, that we have had to cut corners just to keep up. The first place those corners have been cut (and continue to be cut) is with our eating. The whole shift in living has been very slow, beginning with sliced, store bought bread, progressing to TV dinners & microwaves and now the veritable smorgasbord of packaged foods. Not to forget the extreme excess of so called snack foods, most people have made chips and soda pop a staple of their diet instead of an exception (I have been included in this group). But all of this talk about food, convenience and excess begs the question, why? What has caused this drive to busy lifestyles and fast foods? Why is there no longer someone at home, able to prepare healthy meals. What has driven us from our homes and into the rank upon rank of restaurants? (no longer is 'eating out' a special event, but a weekly, even daily activity).

As a Western culture, our expectations of lifestyle have dramatically changed over the course of the twentieth century. What I mean is that, the financial requirements to maintain the lifestyle of the status quo is far beyond that of a hundred years ago. Inflation aside, the average family requires a much greater consumers income to achieve their desired lifestyle. The cost of living requires two incomes or more just to "live comfortably". At least this is what we've led ourselves to believe. Cell phones, satellite TV, land line, internet, movies, that shiny new car (or two), a lovely home and cottage, lavish vacations, electronics, clothes, the list is quite literally limitless. We rack up debt and max out credit cards to put fuel in our SUV's and put big screen TV's in our living rooms (hey, without a TV what would you point all your furniture at anyway?) All of these things have come to be understood as necessities. But are they really. We spend our lives striving to have and maintain a lifestyle full of these things. Most often both husband and wife will work to try to attain this level of 'comfort' (which means a second car of course by necessity). And why not, this is what the world has come to expect as normal, and hey, you should make the most of your life... (and making the most of your life must mean having this opulent lifestyle!) We've even taught our children to hold the same level of materialism by showering them with mountains of junk at every possible opportunity. Every holiday that has been commercialized within our culture is now associated with gift giving - more stuff. Now these same couples have to pay for day care, and someone else is raising the children while they work to help achieve the ideal lifestyle, as expected by our culture. Everyone gets home far too late to prepare a wholesome meal and voila packaged foods. But then everyone must rush out to their various clubs, classes, teams and programs. A part of the ideal lifestyle is taking advantage of every opportunity available to us and providing those opportunities for our children. That is after all the American dream that we have a DUTY to make the most of - certainly our children deserve it! Don't they?

Our culture is socially obese, and the church has blindly followed suit. We have become mired down in a cesspool of secular humanism, materialism – social, physical and spiritual obesity.

I'm not trying to simply lay blame on materialism and secular humanism for the state of our health. The point is that our own selfish ambitions have resulted in our collective poor health. We eat poorly because we have an insidious desire to live the lifestyles of the world. "Live in the world and not of the world." We've lost sight of what this phrase really means. I've heard it used to twist truth and to present false teaching, it is often misrepresented. Romans 12:1-2, admonishing us to not be conformed to this world, but to discern what is the will of God, is talking about how we live. Throughout scripture we are taught what is expected of family, what are the responsibilities of parents and grandparents, what is expected of children. Yet, for some reason, we have allowed the world to dictate how we live and what we strive for. We've allowed ourselves to be deceived into living in the world and of the world. It's not talking about what music we listen to, whether or not we grace the doors of a theater, whether or not technology is okay or whether or not we drink wine. It's talking about our attitudes and hearts. Our goals. Is it our desire to work hard so we can have the next class of car, a bigger house, nice toys for our kids? Or, is it our desire to seek and serve God in all things. This is where we find the destructive power of the prosperity gospel (which isn't gospel), it has allowed the lifestyle of the world to dictate it's spiritual condition. And it is wrong. The social obesity of our culture is being greedily translated into spiritual obesity by many churches.

"I don’t know what you feel about the prosperity gospel; the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel. But I’ll tell you what I feel about it; hatred. It is not the gospel. It is being exported from this country to Africa and Asia. Selling a bill of goods to the poorest of the poor, Believe this message, your pigs won’t die. Your wife won’t have miscarriages. You’ll have rings on your fingers and coats on your back. That’s coming out of America! The people that ought to be given our money and our time and our lives, instead selling them a bunch of crap called “gospel.” ~ John Piper

Our lives are to be a living sacrifice, which may mean we will not live the twenty-first century idea of a comfortable life, complete with all the trappings. It may mean no cell phone, it may mean only one car, it may mean no internet or cable TV. It should mean we are willing to raise families ourselves, as directed in scripture and be content with whatever the Lord sees fit to provide. We need an attitude change in our churches and it needs to begin with ME. We must come to terms with our own Spiritual condition before the Lord and determine just where our affections lie. It may be high time we made some sacrifices and had a parent at home, preparing healthy food and helping establish a Godly lifestyle within the family.

There are a lot of Fat Christians. I am one of them. I don't think the sin is in the over indulgence of food alone (although gluttony, excess and avarice are clearly sinful (2 Peter 1:5-7, 2 Timothy 3:1-9). The sin begins far deeper than that, it begins in our hearts and our relationship to the world. But it's an excellent place to begin coming to terms with it. We are meant to care for our bodies, yet while we slobber over our Big Macs we condemn those who are damaging their bodies by smoking. It's hypocrisy and the world sees it! We commit the same sin as the smoker every time we eat a burger dripping with cholesterol, fat and sodium. We commit the same sin as the smoker every time we gobble down a chemical laced TV dinner. We commit the same sin as the smoker every time we have a pot luck at the church hall and eat ourselves to discomfort. We commit the same sin as the smoker every time we polish off a box of chocolates. We commit the same sin as the smoker every time we polish of our fourth "large double double" of the day.

"In all things moderation", is often misquoted as having come from scripture. It is in fact attributed to Aristotle. However, Paul shares the same idea in this passage.

"Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable." 1 Corinthians 9:25

Moderation is healthy and wholesome and not very well practiced in our society. Excess is rapidly becoming the norm, it is encouraged, serving only to contribute to the state of our lifestyles.

"All things are lawful," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up." 1 Corinthians 10:23

It may seem that it is harmless to eat this food, it is after all food and we must eat (the fact is, that most of this 'food' is more damaging than it is food) . But consider it in context of the big picture. Is it honouring to God or is it simply contributing to a lifestyle that leaves God out of the picture. Our own pleasure and comfort must be secondary to a lifestyle not of this world. A lifestyle that serves to bring glory to God at all costs.

So, I will continue to diet. No longer simply to stave off death and improve my blood pressure. I must shed the social obesity of the world and prevent it from making me spiritually and physically obese.

"Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." 1 Corinthians 10:31

I challenge every Gospel preaching, Bible believing church to take a good hard look at itself. If our congregation is physically and socially obese, it is a symptom of our spiritual health! It's time for a church diet. We must shed our obese lifestyles and seek to live a life apart from the mad materialism of this world, be content in Christ and good stewards of our short time on earth, if for nothing else but to honor God with our testimonies and our bodies.

Follow Christ. Live healthy lives.

1 comment:

Andrew Ardern said...

good post, thank you and praying for you.