Blogotional

Christ tells us:

Matt 10:30 - But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

With such a broad sweeping statement, one would think there is nothing about us too trivial for God, and yet, I could not help but think that this ABC News story is an exercise in trivializing God, and us for that matter.

For Susie Neubaur, part of being a good Christian means trying to be physically fit.

She works out at the Lord's Gym in Clermont, Fla., beginning her day with Bible study and a program called "Body by God."

"Christians, your body is the Holy Spirit's temple," she says. "You want it to look good and be healthy."

There is little spirituality at many of the nation's millions of gyms. In fact, it is probably fair to say the deadly sins like envy, pride and lust are more prevalent than the cardinal virtues.

And that was the motivation for a trend in faith-based fitness, where divine inspiration comes with perspiration. At the Lord's Gym, the walls are covered with motivational messages, and the instructors shout out stimulating quotations from scripture.

A bit of personal testimony. Regular readers know I am in the final stretch of a multi-year effort to lose over 200 pounds without the aid of bariatric surgery. Needless to say, to have been in a position where such an effort was required, weight control has been an issue for my entire life. This has been the most successful weight loss of my life, by a long shot, and I attribute much of that success to a lack of what I call, because I can't think of anything better, "spiritual overtones."

All my life people have told me everything from "You are a gluttonous sinner" to "Losing weight will help you hear God's voice more clearly." All of it absolute and unmitigated horse manure. "You'll be happier!" - HOGWASH! - I love to eat, a lot, and I am very happy doing it. It's true, I find myself better suited to the world around me, both physically in terms of space, but also socially because of the societal prejudices visited upon those of girth, but I was never one to base his happiness on how well I fit into anyone else's expectations. (Aside to the watch bloggers out there that would still insist I was gluttonous, in a place where food is as affordable and plentiful as it is here, gluttony simply does not apply - I took no food from anyone else's mouth, nor did I risk my own wealth, nor was food a god of any sort, I just like it.)

In the end, I began this effort because it had become painful to walk. The weight stressed old sports injuries in the knees and I found my ambulation at risk. Simple, physical cause and effect, no spiritual crisis, and after the first month or so, little emotional impact either - which brings us, finally to my first objection to the story cited above.

We are prone to confusing the emotional with the spiritual, and we do so at great peril. C.S. Lewis has famously said:

"Unless you teach your moods 'where they get off,' you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion."

Spirituality, our life with the Lord God Almighty, occurs on levels far deeper than emotion and when we tie our emotions too closely to the spritual effort, we misdirect ourselves, hold God far more distant that He desires, and never get about the real business God has set for us.

Which brings me to my second objection, the "trend" discussed in the piece just reeks of fitting God to our agenda instead of ourselves to His. Not that God does not want us in physical shape, but in efforts to turn something that should be merely a matter of course into some "great spiritual exercise," we do not sanctify the mundane, but instead simply lower the bar as to what constitutes actual sanctification.

Which is my third objection, one that essentially ties the first two together. The gospel seeks to transform us into beings that conform to God's desires for us, and such transformation is an "inside->out" process. God concluded and culminated centuries of attempting to let man behave as if transformed with Christ, who bore our sins so that God's power could infiltrate us at the deepest levels and render us actually transformed. A transformation that takes time, a life time, and as it occurs it is expressed in our emotions, behavior, and physicality. To attempt to shape those things as opposed to express them is to hold onto control and to block the path of transformation that God would have for us. We reduce God to the "mere" - the mere workout -- the mere appearance -- the mere motivational phrase.

There is nothing mere about the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. We have got to stop asking God to bless what we want and seek instead to bless Him.

Related Tags: God, trivia, workout, gym, spirituality, emotion, weight, weight loss, transformation