Is
it ok for a Christian to be overweight? I’d seen that question before,
and I always turned away because I didn’t want to know the answer. As an
obese person and a follower of Christ, I knew the answer but didn’t
want to face up to it.
Avoidance doesn’t make the question any less valid. We can pluck
verses from the Bible to support different views. How about “…do you not
know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you,
whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” from 1 Corinthians 6.
That one is used quite a bit in support of being fit and healthy.
If you think that focusing too much on physical
fitness is a problem, then you may lean toward 1 Timothy 4: “For bodily
exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things,
having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.”
I always found myself in the
bodily-exercise-profits-a-little camp. Why? Because I didn’t like
exercise, I wanted to be obese, and the less I thought about it the
better. But once again, avoidance doesn’t mean the removal of the
problem.
About a year ago, the opportunity opened up for a
brother to speak to me regarding my weight. He told me plainly, yet
lovingly, that being obese was a hindrance to my testimony. I knew it
was true. I had known it all along. Now, I had to face up to it.
Here are the hard facts: obesity, in the majority
of cases, is a result of gluttony. Gluttony is a lack of self-control. A
lack of self-control is not fruit of the Spirit that now resides in me.
It is a fruit of the flesh. I do know there are some who are overweight
due to medical issues, but those cases are few and far between. For
most of us in America, the problem is an abundance of food mixed with
fleshly, out of control appetites. Continue at JT Crawford
