Many people do not take him seriously, only problems take them over
Even though the world is dominated by the cult of the flesh, many Christians have rather the opposite problem in this area. They do not consider their body important and do not take care of it as they should.
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On a day when the minister of the large Saddleback Protestant congregation in Southern California was baptizing hundreds of people, a thought that was not very pious swirled in his head: “They’re all fat!”
Baptism in this church takes place by immersion in water and then lifting the baptized person, and as pastor Rick Warren says, he physically felt the severity of this problem that day. At the same time, he had to admit that he was no exception.
“At that moment it dawned on me and I realized what a terrible example I was setting for others in the field of health. How can I expect my church congregation to take better care of their bodies when I set such a bad example for them?” he writes in his book The Daniel Program.
The next Sunday, he stood behind the pulpit and asked people for forgiveness. “Friends, I have been a poor steward of my health and set a terrible example for you. Today, I publicly repent of this and ask for your forgiveness,” he declared. He then added that the church was helping the poor and sick around the world, but was ignoring the growing problem within its ranks.
More than 15,000 people signed up for the challenge of who is joining the lifestyle change. So Pastor Warren enlisted three respected doctors and they created the 40-day Daniel Program based on biblical principles and the five fundamentals: diet, exercise, mindset, faith, and friends.
It was not supposed to be a one-time diet, but to acquire lifelong habits and skills. The book The Daniel Program, which was first published ten years ago, even became number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
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In his book, Rick Warren writes about the role food played in his family. Although no one smoked or drank alcohol, no food, no matter how unhealthy, was off-limits. “Every memory, whether good or bad, is associated with food. When we were happy, we celebrated with food. When we were sad, we consoled ourselves with food. If I had a hard day as a child, my cure was cookies with milk or a piece of freshly baked cake.’
Although he has heard thousands of sermons in church since he was a child about what God says about our souls, mind, or emotions, he has never once heard about how God looks at our bodies. “Our society is obsessed with physical beauty and a sexy body, but many believers ignore their bodies as if they don’t matter at all. But the body matters,” emphasizes the pastor.
With quotations from the Holy Scriptures, he proves what approach to the body God, who did not make us owners but stewards of our bodies, asks of us. “Do you not know that you do not belong to yourself, but that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you and whom you have from God?” quotes the pastor from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. “If you saw someone desecrating a temple dedicated to God, would you not consider it a crime? But you abuse and ravage the temple of God, your body, when you rob it of rest and sleep, overeat, put too much stress on it, and do not take care of it,” Pastor Warren calls the “diagnoses” of many Christians.
He also adds as an argument that Jesus paid too much for us to “cough” on each other. “If you bought a racehorse that was worth a million dollars, would you feed it junk food and keep it up all night? Of course not. The fact is that even Jesus has invested in you,” Warren compares.
We tolerate gluttony
Although the American context seems distant to us and we do not consider ourselves a country of hamburgers and fries, the number of overweight people, including children, is still growing in Slovakia, and we are not too far from the USA in terms of sugar consumption.
“It angers me that even though we are a Christian country, we do not see gluttony as a sin. On the contrary, I would say that it is our most tolerated sin,” said obesity researcher from the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV) Adela Penesová in an interview with Postoj newspaper.
Interview with doctor Adela Penesová about the obesity epidemic, overweight children, movement, healthy eating, and extreme transformations.
The doctor’s words are also confirmed by popular missionary Michal Zamkovský. In the book I Confessed, Slovakia identifies overeating as our biggest problem, along with alcoholism. According to both Zamkovský and Penesová, the sin of excessive eating and unhealthy eating is related to times of prosperity and the constant availability of processed foods. Our great-grandparents had a much more modest diet from household supplies, they consumed a minimum of sugar, they ate meat only on holidays, and physical work provided them with plenty of exercise in the fresh air.
“In the last twenty years, observe the change. When we used to go on missions, people were thinner. It was made in the field, in the garden, and it was not as plentiful as it is today. People eat a lot. They probably compensate for the lack of love, understanding, and acceptance,” thinks the priest, but admits that there may be other, medical reasons behind obesity.
Junk food is a new object of addiction for many people. Many processed foods are manufactured to induce it, and it works on a similar principle to alcohol or nicotine addiction.
Father Zamkovsky perceives the lack of moderation as a problem. “We need to learn moderation, the virtue of moderation. I’m afraid that even us priests miss it. Drinking coffee, internet, food…” he evaluates.
The obesitologist from SAS also thinks that many priests are not a good example to their believers in this regard. “Last year, my patient, a Catholic priest, came for a check-up during the fast before Easter and gained two kilos. I asked him: how can you gain weight even during fasting?” she recalls in the interview.
Points of negativity
Pope John Paul II highlighted the dignity of the body and its unity with the soul. in his famous Theology of the Body. He bid farewell to all the ancient theories that despised the body as a prison for the soul and condemned it to mortification. The fifth commandment of God also orders Christians to lead a good life.
Already in the third grade, while preparing for the first Holy Communion, they learned that we should take good care of the body. So why do we Christians still not take the physical side seriously enough and in the church do we not emphasize the need for movement, exercise, healthy diet, and moderation?
Kristína, who is in her thirties, only started looking for a way to a healthy lifestyle as an adult. In retrospect, she realizes that in the environment of the Christian community, where she worked as a teenager, the spiritual side was often developed at the expense of the physical one.
Nowadays, there is talk about the phenomenon of body positivity, which emphasizes acceptance of one’s body, no matter how it looks. “The environment I come from, however, followed a different path – as it were, the path of ‘points of negativity’. We were supposed to take care of our mental or spiritual side, which is also nice, but the body was like a burdensome element that had to be guarded so that it wouldn’t be sinful,” describes Kristína.
The spiritual weekends were accompanied by an unhealthy and high-calorie diet with a minimum of exercise, which did not have room for an intensive intellectual program. Since diet was not addressed even in Kristina’s family, the lifestyle was also reflected in her weight.
Catholic health blogger Emily Stimpson Chapman names the difference between controlling your body and taking care of it. “Some people emphasize control over their body because it can be a source of sin. But the body needs care. It’s a wonderful gift and we need to give it what it needs to do what God created it to do.”
Kneeling and adoring are not enough
Nutritional coach and structural therapist Tomáš Rusňák says that some Christians still perceive the body as something mundane or inferior or at least unimportant. “An overloaded body often speaks to us through pain. In addition to lay people, I have a lot of patients from among priests and religious sisters, who only when something brutally hurts them discover that they also have a body and it is not enough to just kneel and worship, but they need to seek professional help,” Rusňák told Postoj.
“I ask my patients many open questions, for example: Where do you experience your spiritual life? Where do you contemplate God? In the body or out of the body?” he adds.
With one of the priests, who initially sought out Rusňák because of great pain, and with a psychologist, they started doing Z2S2 seminars focused on the soul, spirit, and body. In addition to spiritual lectures and prayers, the participants are also educated on topics from the field of psychology, movement, and lifestyle, but also exercise and eat a nutritionally balanced diet as part of the program.
“When the body receives a balanced diet and exercise, it also affects the spiritual and mental life. On the contrary, when, for example, I sit at the computer all day. My digestion is broken, I have no energy either for prayer or playing with the children, so I lie down on the couch,” says the therapist, who calls today’s generation of people working at computers “homo status”.
Interview with health and nutrition coach Tomáš Rusňák, who integrates the scientific procedures of physiology and Christian theology.
Many Christians welcome the possibility of seminars focusing not only on the soul but also on the body. “A lot of believers who want to do something with themselves, when they search the Internet, they come across everything and they are afraid of it. The presence of a priest is a guarantee for them that it will not drift towards esotericism,” said priest Marek Kunder, who collaborates in the creation of Z2S2 seminars, in the U Nikodéma
Therapist Tomáš Rusňák, who also studied in the United States, tries to look at his patients as a whole. According to him, ignoring the needs of the body often stems from an unhealthy perception of one’s self-worth, overlooking one’s uniqueness, perfection, and the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Overeating can be related to emotional problems, relationship or personal injuries, sin, stress, or ignorance. “I always ask the patient about his medical history, I ask him many questions about his lifestyle and then I try to guide him. In addition to healthy nutrition and exercise, sleep, daily routine, the ability to relax, build personality, relationships, or consciously prepare for eternity with every activity are very important.”
Verbist Ján Štefanec completed a course for priests in Canada based on a holistic approach to people. When developing a person, he takes into account his physical, spiritual, and mental needs. “It was a valuable experience for me that greatly influenced me. A spiritual life without a healthy lifestyle cannot function to its full potential, as well as a performance-oriented life without the necessary rest and fulfillment of spiritual needs. That’s also why I balance spiritual activity with physical work and sports whenever possible,” says the priest about his experience.
According to him, in addition to a balanced life, it is important to take care of the body. “I don’t gamble with my health, I go for preventive check-ups and keep fit. This is the basis for healthy self-development and awareness of one’s place and mission here on earth,” emphasizes Štefanec.
A good example of how clearly defined rules of life within a church community can affect the health of its members is the American town of Loma Linda in California. Shockingly, the city near Los Angeles in the bustling part of the United States has been designated as one of the five blue zones, along with the Greek island of Ikaria, Italian Sardinia, Japanese Okinawa, and Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula. These are areas where a large number of people live to the full strength of old age, several or even hundreds.
In Loma Linda, people live about a decade longer than the American average. In the reports that were filmed there, you can see a century-old heart surgeon who says that he would have no problem standing behind the operating table with a scalpel. Despite his age, his head and body worked as a unit.
What is the secret of this small town’s health? “A third of the population of Loma Linda is a Seventh-day Adventist community. Their faith leads them to treat their bodies like temples: no or little meat or fish, no smoking, no alcohol, lots of exercise, and a life of purpose,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Life in Loma Linda can be glimpsed in the Netflix series Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones (Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones). National Geographic reporter Dan Buettner shows the lives of old people in full force, who pray together, cook colorful vegetable meals, serve as volunteers, and move a lot in big sports fields. At the same time, all these activities prevent life in isolation, which is another prerequisite for a healthy life even in old age.
We have in common with this Protestant denomination the perception of the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit. The difference is that Adventists put a lot of emphasis on health, exercise, and diet and take it as part of their faith. In other words, they take it seriously.
While moderation, plenty of exercise, and modest food were the necessary standard two generations ago, in today’s age of sedentary jobs and stores full of processed foods, a healthy lifestyle is the result of a conscious choice. This topic is more relevant today than ever before.
Christianity offers us many arguments about why the body matters. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt if we were sometimes reminded of them from the pulpit.
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