Other people's diets are boring

I feel so damn Bridget Jones talking about this stuff (which: can I just make it clear that that’s not a good thing; I feel no kinship with Ms Jones apart from these brief, avoided episodes, mostly because it feels deeply wrong that a frumpy klutz with permanent foot-in-mouth scored one of the world’s limited supply of eligible human rights lawyers. Much less Hugh Grant. TMI? Let’s move on…). I lost some weight and God taught me some stuff. So:

(Oops) I did it again
Spectacular things, once-off things, things that only take a limited amount of time and attention – I like ‘em. But this personally administered makeover has been the opposite of that – a cumulation of small changes in lifestyle over a long time. It shouldn’t be a surprise – it seems to be a model God is fond of. Like: remember Him each time you meet and eat; pray without ceasing; Sabbath-out on a seven-day rotation. The Big ‘Once’ is sometimes appropriate, but God has reminded me again that lots of what I am is a result of what I do repeatedly.

The knee bone’s connected to the…soul bone, actually
It’s about loving people for who they really are, right? Because beauty is only skin deep? Except when it’s you and your beautiful soul? The unspoken assumption being that there is some sort of ‘you’ – maybe even the truest ‘you’ – which is distinct from your body. The philosophers and theologians can debate the technicalities, but here is what I’ve noticed: my body and my mind and my emotions – and presumably my soul – are intimately – inextricably? – connected. Physical tiredness short-circuits mental agility. My emotional status impacts on my physical capacity. I sin because I didn’t go to bed early enough. I feel distant from God because my mind is undisciplined. It’s not completely worked out, but it feels like important information.

Old-school variety show
Hands up if you’ve heard this before: we’re living in a post-modern age, where it’s not about facts or truth, it’s about relationship, and the thing people hunger most for is connectedness, community, the sense that someone cares. Well, don’t burn your graphs and flip charts just yet, people. There are modernists in your midst. Nerds. Geeks. Children of The Enlightenment. Fact-hungry eggheads who would rather calculate than communicate. I know – I am one. I tried following the touchy-feely principles – ‘eat a diverse diet, lots of colours, mostly fruit and vegetables, only a little processed food’ – and all I got was confusion and guilt. But with hard data – ‘a peach has 60 calories, a muffin has 600’ – I can make informed decisions. My point? If I’m talking to people about God-stuff, some of them will probably want information, not just relationship. Some of them will respond to the rightness, the completeness, the intellectual elegance of a God-based worldview – or any number of other God-things. Some of them will mostly want to know that He loves them. But that diversity is ok.

Guilty pleasures
So there's a lot to talk about when it comes to food and body and morality and such. One of the things I’ve learnt is this: food is a moral issue to the extent that any stewardship is a moral issue. God has given me resources – body, health, money, skills, time, mind – and the point is to use them under His direction. If I use them poorly, I show disrespect to The Giver. But the chocolate itself (and the plasma-screen and the song) is value-neutral. That knowledge is freeing. It feels more true. It’s counter-cultural. I like it.