By Mike Leno

“I’ve gone over to the other side!” I announced as I reached for the refrigerator. My wife and son looked unimpressed as I swung the door open and reached for a white carton. Then they groaned loudly as I showed them the label, “Light Silk, Soy Milk.” Of all the abuse I take for trying to be healthy, the most enjoyable kind comes from my family. That’s because they’ve seen me eat some pretty unhealthy things over the years and have hinted, cajole, joked, and rolled their eyes at my weak rationales, empty promises and expanding waistline. “I’ll eat better tomorrow,” I maintained. “I’ll run off the extra calories; pass the doughnuts please.”

The implications of “going over to the other side,” however, make me hesitate to admit my interest in eschewing animal products and chewing on plants instead. I may joke about it but I know that in the eyes of many I am no longer “normal.” I realized that one day when a friend admitted she wasn’t sure about inviting me to her house for home-made ice cream. “Should I make some out of soy milk for you?” she wondered. I assured her that I would still enjoy the regular ice cream as always. It’s true. I don’t see why a healthy lifestyle should keep me from the occasional celebratory indulgence, in moderation of course. Besides, I’m not a fanatic. Or am I?

In common parlance, a fanatic is someone who really gets into something. For example, a sports fanatic or “fan” is someone who spends time watching people play games. In that sense, the word “enthusiast” fits as well as fanatic. Sports enthusiasts and sports fans are about the same thing, even if fans might seem more sedentary. But when applied to health we run into an interesting paradox. A health enthusiast does not always enjoy the same positive regard as a sports enthusiast. Or, to put it another way, a sports fanatic and a health fanatic may appear semantically parallel but hail from entirely different universes. We admire or at least tolerate with amusement the sports fan who waves a broom, urging his team to sweep a series, or even the one who dons a large green suit and calls himself the Phillie Phanatic*. But we might regard with contempt or even hostility, someone who makes an obvious effort to eat a good diet to the point of refusing what we have to offer. As one of Mark Twain’s characters said, “Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.” We take personal affront at something that seeks a greater good. We laugh approvingly at the buffoon. Our resistance to something better than our own personal taste remains an obvious and pervasive human flaw. It rears its ugly head in many endeavors including art, literature, music, worship, and any good lifestyle habit requiring learning and change.

But there is a more important reason than pressure to conform to popular norms that causes my rejection of the health fanatic label. And that reason involves the biblical principles of the gospel. In that context, the one who truly deserves to be called a health fanatic does not eat right for the sake of living better or longer. He does so out of religious obligation. To him, his health is a secondary concern. He obeys the rules in order to be accepted by God. The other term for this sort of fanaticism is legalism.

Let me be clear. A person may make strict lifestyle choices in the areas of nutrition and exercise. In evangelistic zeal he might even become what I termed in the previous issue a “healthier than thou” type of person. (See “I’m Not a Health Fanatic” at http://mikeleno.net). He might proclaim his good health as a gift from God and diligently seek to do all eating and drinking to His glory. That person, I maintain, is not a fanatic. He may be irritating at times. And he might make a clear link between his religion and his eating habits. But that in itself does not make him a fanatic. But if he performs his health rituals out of a fear of being defiled, breaking rules or falling out of favor with God, then he has crossed over from enthusiast to rabid fanaticism.

One day Jesus got into an argument with the fanatics of his day over mandatory washing rituals. Specifically, the Pharisees objected to the rather lax attitude of the disciples who didn’t wash their hands before they ate. Keep in mind that the Pharisees were not worried about physical contamination. They were worried about breaking the rules regarding ceremonial washing. Eating with unwashed hands made a person unclean. The notion of being defiled or unclean in this way had a long history dating back to the days of Moses. In ways reminiscent of leading children by the hand (Hebrews 8:9) God had given his people remedial instructions that kept them separate from the religious practices of the surrounding cultures. Although the instruction undoubtedly made the people healthier than they would have been otherwise, the primary intent was not to avoid physical uncleanness but religious or ceremonial uncleanness. Of course ceremonial purity represented spiritual purity—an undivided heart that involves loyalty and trust in relationship to God. The problem was the institutionalized religion of Jesus’ day had long forgotten the link between symbol and reality. And so Jesus, in Matthew 15:8, 9 quotes Isaiah 29:

Even so, Jesus might have pulled the disciples aside and said, “Look here guys. We’ve got a public relations problem on our hands. If you keep eating without going through the right washing motions, word will spread that we don’t obey the law. So just make it look good. And your hands are dirty anyway so wash them!” But Jesus said nothing of the kind. Instead, he made a startling statement of principle that broadened the topic from one specifically about washing to any issue related to eating and spirituality.

In Mark’s version of the story, he includes this editorial statement:

The scope of Jesus’ statement remains breathtaking. Things that go in do not defile. That means food of any kind including pickled pigs feet washed down with strong brew and even food eaten with dirty hands. Eating those things does not defile a person, Jesus says. They do not cause a person to be spiritually unworthy. What causes a person to be defiled or spiritually unclean, says Jesus, is what a person says because that reveals the condition of the heart.

Can you make yourself spiritually unacceptable by what you eat or drink? Jesus said no. And if you think otherwise, He said you honor Him with your lips and not with your heart.

Paul, who wrote his epistles before the Gospels were published, was even more pointed when he said,

I invited a guest speaker to my church to talk about health. I was stunned and disappointed, however, to hear him explain that our best and only correct motivation for eating right was not to be healthier and happier. I guess he thought that didn’t sound spiritually noble enough. Instead, he said our highest motivation was to obey God. Do it because God says so, he maintained. Now let me assure you, I’m in favor of obeying God. And to do otherwise in a deliberate, persistent and rebellious manner does put our salvation in jeopardy. But to my ears, the message that day clearly made the kingdom of God a matter of eating and drinking. The speaker’s words directly contradicted the plain teaching of scripture including the words of Jesus himself. I have invited other speakers who made wonderful, research based presentations about healthy living as a gift of a loving God. But on this occasion I made a note to myself not to invite anyone back who would so pervert the gospel of Christ through legalism and fanaticism. Maybe that sounds harsh and even judgmental. But the gospel remains our most precious gift and must be protected against well-meaning but corrupting influences. If you don’t have the gospel, it doesn’t matter how healthy you are. You can live long and still not live right.

How then can we honor the gospel and enjoy good health? How can we avoid fanaticism and yet provide help to those who are literally dying for a change in lifestyle. The most direct answer comes again from Paul.

The context here involves questions of conscience regarding food offered to idols. Under the old Mosaic Law and even the guidelines given by the apostles in Acts 15, food offered to idols was forbidden. Yet Paul does not condemn those who see no harm in eating food offered to a piece of wood or stone. After all, they reasoned, an idol is nothing and there is only one God. Therefore, how could there be anything inherently evil about food?

Paul agreed with them but cautions that in exercising their freedom they might be damaging the faith of someone else who was not as spiritually advanced. The immature might not be able tell the difference between eating food offered to idols and actually worshipping the idol. Thus, all things are lawful, or permissible. But not everything is beneficial. You can do some things that might be ok in and of themselves. But if they hurt your brother or sister, you will want to avoid them.

Paul’s statement remains a timeless principle by which we can make lifestyle choices. Why should we be healthy and teach others how to do the same? Because of the obvious reasons—to promote a happier existence; to live a better and longer life—in other words because it is beneficial. Eating pig and drinking beer obviously fall into the category of not beneficial. So does eating with dirty, germ infested hands. We don’t need any better motivation than that. We don’t need the law, ceremonial or otherwise, or the threat of God’s wrath. Good health is a gift to be celebrated not a ceremonial ritual to protect us from defilement.

But for Paul there remains an even more important issue than benefiting our personal health. Although we may not have to worry about supermarket food being offered to idols, we should be concerned about spiritual priorities. That means our overriding concern is the spiritual health of others, not just their physical health. We can make great presentations about health and have all the correct principles and scientific data to back it up. But if our “truth” becomes a spiritual stumbling block, that is, it obscures or perverts the gospel of Christ, then we do more harm than good. Spiritual health remains more important than physical health. So when Paul says, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (I Corinthians 10:31), he is talking about being unselfish. He is not talking about obeying the food laws. Doing something for the glory of God is an outward directed activity. It is not an act of self purification. To glorify God means to benefit others.

So as a result of my decision to avoid the fatted calf and a dinner menu flowing with milk and honey (except on celebratory occasions, of course), I may be irritating, but I refuse to be labeled a fanatic, at least in the religious health-freak sense. Health enthusiast suits me just fine. Furthermore we have many good motivations for being healthy; reasons that have nothing to do with following a set of rules or trying to be good enough for God. Avoiding disease, having a wider range of physical and mental capabilities, and being a more emotionally stable person come immediately to mind. But even bad motivations sometimes serve to get one started. As I indicated in “I’m Not a Health Fanatic,” I started my quest for better health out of vanity. And I suspect that others do the same, especially if their immediate goal is weight loss. Many people start on a healthier lifestyle out of a sense of duty and even obedience to the laws of Moses. In many of our evangelistic efforts we even encourage that. And that’s ok as long as it doesn’t stop there. Vanity is certainly not sufficient reason to keep me on the nutritionally straight and narrow. And motivations involving legalism and avoiding that which is ceremonially unclean work for a while but lose their meaning in the long run. Good health involves all aspects of the person, mental and spiritual as well as physical. Therefore, we must not promote health as some sort of guilt based purification ritual.

Here is the simple truth: If you persist in being unhealthy, God will not punish you. He will love, accept and seek to heal you as always. Your body will eventually rebel against you but that is not God getting you back. Not all things are beneficial and lifestyle choices have consequences of their own. And sometimes diseases happen at random not because God is arbitrary and vengeful. A good physician (especially one who knows something about nutrition and preventive medicine) does not kill the patients who refuse to follow her advice. She continues to help them even after they contract the diseases they could have avoided. She might give them a stern lecture complete with apocalyptic warnings of dire consequences. She might even use invasive procedures if necessary. But she does not kill them out of revenge for their ignorance, willful or otherwise. She always seeks to save them. The Bible tells me God is like that. And on that I take my stand. The fanatics can sit down.

*Information about the Phillie Phanatic:
http://philadelphia.phillies.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/phi/community/phi_community_phanatic.jsp