{"id":15,"date":"2010-03-02T17:50:52","date_gmt":"2010-03-02T17:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/headofleslie.com\/blog\/?p=15"},"modified":"2010-03-02T23:18:19","modified_gmt":"2010-03-02T23:18:19","slug":"what-we-eat-and-how-it-exposes-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/headofleslie.com\/blog\/what-we-eat-and-how-it-exposes-us\/","title":{"rendered":"What We Eat and How It Exposes Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Growing up in the church, I’ve heard a lot of sermons about stuff we put in our bodies. But all the sermons I have heard relate to specific culturally relevant subjects. For example, most people who have attended church for any length of time have heard lessons that at least touched on the subject of alcohol consumption, and maybe even smoking tobacco. There are also plenty of lessons regarding drug use of various forms. But you know what you rarely hear lessons about – the food we consume. Sure, we get sermons from doctors about lowering our cholesterol and things of that nature, but we rarely talk about it in the church.\u00a0 What got me thinking about this subject was an article that was linked to by a Christian cartoonist I follow on twitter.\u00a0 (Click Here<\/a> to check out the article)<\/p>\n

I not only find this to be odd, but actually hypocritical. After all, one of the main arguments we use against things like tobacco and drugs is pulled from 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, who you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.<\/em>” What a great passage! In such short form, Paul does tell us so much about how we ought to respect our bodies and treat them as something important to God.\u00a0 It’s part of how we worship God with our lives!<\/p>\n

But if this is an argument against something like smoking (and I’ve even heard it used against consuming alcohol at all) why is it not an argument against eating poorly?\u00a0 The fact is, we know what poor eating habits will do.\u00a0 Not only will they increase risk of heart attack and stroke, but they can lead to all kinds of cancers.\u00a0 And besides that, we know a lot of what we put in our bodies has been, as the writer of the aforementioned article states, “pesticide laced.”\u00a0 Our vegetables are grown in large quantities, and covered in pesticides to keep them from being taken out.\u00a0 The meat we eat has often been pumped full of all sorts of bad stuff – it has to be, in order to produce the amount we do at such a fast pace.\u00a0 Living in the foothills of North Carolina, where there are thousands of chicken coops, I have seen this first hand – they feed the chickens bad stuff because they need them to grow and be gone ASAP so the next batch can come in and be shipped out.\u00a0 But how often do we consider this when we eat?\u00a0 We know for a fact it is not good to intake a lot of what is put into our food for various reasons, yet we continue to intake it all the same.\u00a0 If someone did this with drugs, or even something as common as tobacco, we would, rightfully, consider them foolish.\u00a0 But when we do this with things we eat on a daily basis, we consider it the norm.<\/p>\n

But this truly does reflect our theology, does it not?\u00a0 Perhaps a better way of saying it is that it exposes our theology.\u00a0 If we truly believe that our body is the temple of God – that we truly carry within us the image of a holy God – then how can we do anything but take care of it?\u00a0 Imagine, if you will, that you lived in Old Testament times – when there was a temple that was part of service to God.\u00a0 If you were placed in charge of cleaning the temple, how would you go about it?\u00a0 If you wanted to please God (and perhaps avoid being killed) you would not just sweep things under a nearby rug, only be concerned when someone vomited on the floor.\u00a0 You would do your very best to make everything as nice and neat as possible.\u00a0 It’s God’s house after all – it deserves better treatment.<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, people still do this today, but we’ve misunderstood God’s “location”. \u00a0 We make sure our church buildings are clean and tidy, but the thing which we are told actually houses God – our body, the temple – we let slide.\u00a0 How many preachers, elders, deacons, etc. are, to be blunt about it, fat and out of shape?\u00a0 How many people in the church today are running dangerously high levels of cholesterol and are consuming dangerous amounts of fatty foods and sugar-laden beverages?\u00a0 Does this not expose our true respect for our temple?\u00a0 I think it does, and I’ll be honest – I’m guilty as well.<\/p>\n

But as in all things, we need to be an example to the world.\u00a0 Imagine if Christians were the first ones to stand up and lead the way to physical health! Imagine the evangelistic opportunities – people coming to worship and study with us because they see how we live!\u00a0 They see that we are healthier, not because we are following some law book, but because we are simply respecting a great gift that God has given us – our bodies!\u00a0 And by the way, don’t be fooled – this body isn’t destined to be destroyed, it’s destined to be transformed (1 Cor. 15).\u00a0 Knowing that God has greater plans for this body than to simply burn it up, how much more should we respect it!\u00a0 God knew what he was doing when he gave it to us! Let’s respect God by respecting his creation.<\/p>\n

We need to be honest with ourselves.\u00a0 We need to ask ourselves a simple question – how am I treating this body that God has given me?\u00a0 If the answer to that is “poorly” (which for most American Christians, it probably is) then let’s ask a follow up question – how can I fix this problem?\u00a0 So as I close, that’s the question I pose to you – what can the body of believers today do to help reform our thinking about this and what other things can we do to help glorify God in our bodies?\u00a0 And as a follow-up question: why have we ignored this problem for so long?\u00a0 I’m not saying we need to freak out and become particular about every little thing, but we do need to at least consider this.\u00a0 We should be a light to the world in all areas, and I can’t see why this area should be an exception.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up in the church, I’ve heard a lot of sermons about stuff we put in our bodies. But all the sermons I have heard…<\/p>\n

Continue readingWhat We Eat and How It Exposes Us<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9],"tags":[12,11,48,47,13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/headofleslie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/headofleslie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/headofleslie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headofleslie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headofleslie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/headofleslie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17,"href":"https:\/\/headofleslie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/headofleslie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headofleslie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headofleslie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}