It is not what you eat, but what is eating you!

Ok so this post may be a tough one for some people.  Please know as I write this, I speak from my own struggles and victory that our Lord has given me.  I am grateful and humbled by God’s amazing healing and grace around this and I want to help others experience the same powerful victory, that is where my heart is.  If you are reading this and you are struggling know that I can both relate and empathize with you.  Yet I feel very strongly that I must not pull any punches when I talk about this issue.

When I speak and teach on how God wants us to treat our bodies, what we put in it, what we do with it, and how important it is to our growth and ability to serve God, I always get someone who interprets this as “Old Testament” legalism.  I get the line that “all things are clean to me” and “God is concerned with my soul more than my body.”  Of course this defensiveness is natural.  As Christians many are told that proper behavior means abstaining from, drinking strong beverages, drugs, illicit sexual activity, anger, violence, etc…  But food, now everyone likes a good “feast”…How can this be a sin?  Food in itself is also an absolute must to survive.  We can’t abstain from eating for more than a few weeks or we will die at some point.  So we need to eat, that is not the issue…

The issue is that for many in the church (just as society as a whole) food has become the drug of choice.  We medicate ourselves with food, and we use it to combat all of the bad emotions and stress of our lives.  We use it as a reward system, as a way to ease the pain of relational problems.  In many ways it is really not what we eat, but what is eating us up inside that creates all sorts of issues with how we treat and relate to food.  In the end it is a heart issue.  When taken to the extreme the consequences are devastating, not just from a physical health perspective but also from a spiritual.  When we over eat we dull our spiritual senses, we cant hear or relate with God effectively.  For many of us it is the sin of gluttony.   Gluttony is not always the image of some slothy medieval lord snarfing down a whole side of wild boar while drinking a big gulp.  Gluttony is a condition of the heart where we seek to fill the void in our hearts with food believing that it can solve our problems.  Gluttony says, “Too much is never enough.”  Gluttony says “super size me,” and “have it your way.”  Our American society is a gluttonous society.  We love excess, and sadly this has infiltrated the church in subtle but devastating ways.  Food has become an idol before us.

So what do we make of all of this?  First we must realize that many (yes many) of us struggle with a condition known as “emotional eating.”  We eat when we are emotionally hungry, not physically hungry.  We have a switch that has been programmed into our sinful selves that responds to this in varying degrees telling us to feed ourselves when we are in fact, not needing food for survival purposes.  Also our SAD (standard American diet) consists of many ingredients that are actually physically addictive to our bodies.  White flour and sugar are like heroin for many people.  I could go on and on.

Please know that this has absolutely nothing to do with what we look like.  Body types are unique and we are all fearfully and wonderfully created.  Some have heavier builds, others lighter builds.  Of course there are medical conditions around this as well, but most weight and health issues are a result of our diet and lifestyle, not hereditary as many rationalize they are.  This is about being healthy and vibrant and having the blessing of good health and vitality in order to both serve God and bring Him Glory.  Very few of God’s people have a proper Biblical understanding of a proper diet.  We must resist the temptation to dismiss God’s dietary laws as Old Testament legalism, and embrace the timeless truth of what God says about diet, exercise, and proper stewardship of our bodies.  We do this in the spirit of the law, not to earn our salvation or create a purely works based theology, but simply because we want to honor God, and allow him to bless us.

Health and wellness is not only a passion for me, it is a calling of mine to help God’s people discover all they were created to be, and I want to help those who struggle with food.