An Open Letter to My Fellow Christians
This one is for my Christ-following friends, though it might be relevant for others as well.
“Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well.”
3 John 1:2, NIV
I have wanted to write this for a long time. I have hesitated for many reasons. The biggest one is that this is not a salvation issue. Your relationship with Christ doesn’t hinge on this. I don’t want anyone to feel like they aren’t doing this “Christian thing” right for not doing/caring about this.
I have also hesitated because I do not want to shame anyone. This is something I feel convicted about, but I recognize that we are all called to different mission fields within the broader (and much more important) field of spreading the Gospel.
The final reason I have been wary to share these thoughts is that this is perhaps a small problem that Christians should be working on within our society. Nonetheless, this is a big deal within my heart and I feel compelled to share my thoughts. Take them as they are meant, with me recognizing that we are all walking our own paths and that we are not called to judge our fellow brothers and sisters.
From the very beginning of creation, God gave man the job of governing the earth. Even before the fall. In Eden humans and the rest of creation functioned in harmony. I don’t know for sure, but I imagine the garden produced a bumper crop every season, and since it was paradise there was always plenty growing. But after the fall humans faced something entirely different. We now had to sweat and toil to be able to produce a harvest and fight and kill wild animals to find nourishment.
With the nature of humans being to make our work easier, we slowly developed tools, systems, and technology to make our food easier to cultivate and access. And slowly but surely we started to think that God’s command to subdue the earth became a call to completely smash it into smithereens without any respect for the creation that was originally such a beautiful gift.
And then comes the amazing bodies that our loving Father created. These bodies come with an incredible design. A design that allows us to think, dream, and create. Our bodies are so incredible and when they are healthy we are capable of so much! Just as God designed us to be.
The problem is that just as we have neglected our duty to gracefully manage the earth, we have also neglected our duty to gracefully manage our bodies. The bodies that house our spirit and the spirit of our creator and savior. We have allowed our gluttony to take over and destroy the one creature that was created in the image of God.
We deliberately consume foods we know are harmful. We celebrate overindulgence. We pray for health and rejected what our Father has provided for us to thrive.
As I said, our salvation doesn’t require a healthy body. (Praise the Lord for that!) But God does ask us to take care of our bodies to the best of our abilities. He created them to be healthy, not bogged down with factory food substances that trick us into endless munching.
“‘I have the right to do anything,’ you say—but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’—but not everything is constructive.”
1 Corinthians 10:23, NIV
The creator has given us so much amazing and nourishing, real food that it’s almost a smack in the face to reject it for the packaged stuff. Our bodies were designed to enjoy the food that our loving Father designed for us. We should find pleasure in our food and in enjoying our food in fellowship with others, but also be aware that self-control is a fruit of the spirit. And when we eat real food, our bodies are able to use that self-control much more easily than when we are tricked with chemical-laden foods that dare us to “eat just one.”
“If you find honey, eat just enough— too much of it, and you will vomit.”
Proverbs 25:16, NIV
And lest what I am saying comes across as a call for perfection, I remind you that idol worship can also come in the form of orthorexia.
Christ-followers, we should not be dragging our feet, light years behind and not even recognizing that what we are doing is in direct opposition to our scriptures. Not only in what we put into our bodies but also in where what we eat comes from and how it is treated. No farmer or farmhand should be selling their product at a fraction of what it costs to produce, at the end of the day struggling to make ends meet. No animal should be contained, eating foods they weren’t designed for and never seeing the sunshine. No creature should feel stress for days or months leading up to their death. Not one bit of creation should be stripped of its nutrient-dense, fertile soil with over-farming. No human body should be suffering the consequences of food grown with poisons, and engineered in a lab with no regard for the health of the consumer. There is harmony even in this fallen world, and we should be striving to sing along, not trying to play the record backward.
Christians, wake up! We should be at the forefront of the sustainability, biodynamic, fair-trade, holistic, beyond-organic, real food movement. We are called to be stewards. It’s high time we took that role seriously.
This article was originally published to my Instagram on November 25, 2020.
Frist photo by jens holm on Unsplash
Second photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash
