There has been much debate recently over the ethics of various
Christian groups who have been making weight loss and weight control
the focus of their evangelistic mission.
These
various bodies for Christ movements claim with varying degrees of moral
dogmatism that slimness is next to Godliness and that obesity is a sin.
Many
others are simply condemning such messages as just the latest absurdity
to inhabit that crossover point between established religion and
surreal consumerism.
But perhaps the issue deserves a much
closer look, if not from a personal belief standpoint then perhaps with
regard to the psychology of natural, lasting and painless weight loss.
Something
will always strike you if you visit a mainstream place of prayer, and
it doesn't have to be a Christian house of worship; it can also be from
amongst the World's rich heritage of other great monotheistic religions.
And
for those of us obsessing about our weight, or caught up in long-term
and futile dieting cycles, this differentiating detail is very, very
obvious indeed. The rate of overweight amongst these congregations is
often way below the societal average.
These are congregations
who buy in generally to the messages of love and respect at the core of
their belief systems. Moderation and temperance also feature but these
are by no means cultures, unlike the specific dieting-for-Jesus
sub-cults, which make any great play of weight control advice.
If
one seeks out other, modernist, congregations, of non-religious but
like-minded believers, then the pattern repeats. It is most obvious at
entrepreneurial conventions. These not closed attendance events for the
members of senior professional associations, where the attendees have
frequently grown plump on the back of long-term monopolistic fees. No,
these are places where self-starters gather from all corners, ravenous
to lap up the motivational cream from their success story idols and so
nourish their own precious start-up and expansion plans.
What
all of these individuals share, both sacred and secular, is a burning
passion. Food is removed to a secondary, or indeed, even lesser role in
their lives. Life is not measured by feeding and food fretting but
rather in terms of a personal morality of creating, doing and
achieving.
And this is where dieting will fail its own deluded
believers every time. Once the current artificial creed of what is
right or wrong to eat comes to an end, as it always must, what is left
to fill the sudden void within? Nothing except the cravings of old
which rapidly tumble back into full and riotous flow, perpetuating the
feast-famine cycle of weight un-control.
The lesson for today is
that Jesus may well fill you with good things but there many other ways
forward which also leave no room any longer for dieting nonsense, food
worries or other such junk. Don't diet, do it |
