It seems like everywhere I drive these days necessitates the dodging of joggers and bicyclists. Our health crazed society has everyone obsessed with warding off old age and physical ailments with exercise, diet and cholesterol reducing medications. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that there is some profit in daily exercise. Even the Bible attests to this fact; as Paul exclaimed to Timothy, “…bodily exercise profiteth little” (1 Timothy 4:8). It may not profit us much, but it does a “little.”
According to a current television commercial, walking so many minutes each day results in daily adding healthy days to our life. If this is so, then we can all walk our way into everlasting life. No wonder the roads are so crowded with walkers, joggers and bicyclists; they’re all straining their muscles in order to stretch out their longevity to the point of no longer sweating death.
Now, my problem with all of this is not with folks eating bean sprouts and seaweed, frequenting the health spa, and daily swallowing fistfuls of vitamin pills. Instead, it’s with the fact that this is one of many areas in our lives today where God has been completely removed from the equation. All we have left is man’s figures, which never add up to a satisfactory answer. For instance, there’s always that healthy couch potato who lives to a ripe old age and that triathlete who dies young.
Is my life expectancy to be determined by God or my cholesterol count? Although the Bible teaches that my final appointment—my appointment with death—has been set by God (Job 14:5; Psalm 39:4; 139:16; Hebrews 9:27), am I to conclude that God is constantly rescheduling it. He moves it up every time I eat a Big Mac and moves it back every time I eat a granola bar? If this is the case, then is it really God or V8 Juice and Cheetos that determine the length of my life?
All of this was brought home to me at this year’s Masters Golf Tournament. Gary Player, a 78 year old professed Christian playing in a record breaking 51st Masters, was asked to explain his unbelievable longevity on the PGA Tour. The moment Player was asked the question, I anxiously anticipated this brother in Christ seizing the opportunity afforded him to witness for our Lord. I expected Mr. Player to express in no uncertain terms his undying gratitude to God for a long and healthy life. I was horribly disappointed, however, when Gary Player gave all of the credit to himself for eating a healthy diet and exercising daily. Rather than telling millions of television viewers to place their faith in God, Player told them to purchase some barbells.
Now, once again, I have no problem with barbells and steamed broccoli; I just have a problem with people who believe that the number of birthdays we get to celebrate is totally up to us. It’s just a simple matter of frequenting the health resort more than the church house, eating more rice cakes than pancakes, and counting calories more than meditating on the Scriptures, which the Bible teaches can bring “health to all [your] flesh” (Proverbs 4:20-22).
This wrong and widespread mindset goes along way in explaining why most people today are so preoccupied with the care of their physical bodies that they end up totally carefree when it comes to their immortal souls. Like the Rich Fool who Jesus spoke about in Luke 12:16-21, many foolish people today will be looking ahead to a nonexistent future at the time of their unexpected demise. Having lived their whole lives supposedly securing for themselves multiple extensions of their temporal existence, they will suddenly and surprisingly find their temporal existence terminated and themselves unprepared to meet their God (Amos 4:12).
When it comes to giving an account of ourselves to God (Romans 14:12), the miles we’ve jogged will get us nowhere at all, neither will good-looking abs nor the amount of fiber we’ve consumed. The only thing that will matter when we stand before God is whether or not we have drunk the “living water” (John 4:10, 13-14) and eaten “the bread of life” (John 6:48-51). While caring for your physical body is good, caring for you immortal soul is far more important. Thus, don’t be a fool; don’t attend to the former to the neglect of the latter. If you do, you may be fit for the here and now, but you’ll be unfit for the hereafter, not to mention eternally sorry.
Don Walton
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