December 22, 2011
Comparables
Since last fall my diet and exercise regime has taken a back seat to
meetings, events and scheduling conflicts. I’m not suggesting that my gym
partners at the fitness center are judging me, but some might certainly use me
as an example for motivation to stay with their own program. It’s easy for us
to look at someone else with slipping abs, thicker thighs and wing flaps and
say I’m glad I don’t look like them. However, it really never crosses our minds
to think that others may be giving us the once over and using us as an object
for confidence in their own righteousness.
“The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am
not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax
collector.’” (Luke 18:11 NIV)
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3 comments:
I can assure you, based on every word I've read in the Bible, that God sees little value in your gym membership. Don't eat loads of cake and cookies and "tater" chips, and lean off the caffeine. Take a walk, park in the further spaces from the door. There. Diet and exercise. We're not called to look buff on the outside my dear brother/sister. We're called to exercise the inner man. God bless you and don't worry about your abs. In the end, they won't matter at all.
Kelline,
Glad to have you join the conversation.
I agree with you, we are to exercise the inner man, but sometimes our lack of inner man exercise shows up on our hips.
My original thought was that most of us would be somewhat taken back if we realized others were using us as an example of ‘what not to be’.
Gail
Gail;
-----I agree with you. The bit of slippage in your physique’s fitness probably in at least one remote thought at the gym has become that object lesson of which you note. And you should not serve that example. Nor really should the thought’s thinker treat your slippage as the bar over which she's hurtled. It is definitely wrong to carry a misfit load, like Kelline rightly observed: eating our cakes and cookies and chips sparsely and walking completely across the parking lot to buy them is right. Even cutting out the caffeine is right if that is what it takes to have a properly buff condition. Appearance is important because it is a statement. Like you said, it shows spiritual condition. And appearance certainly extends beyond physical fluffiness. We need to dress appropriately for wherever we are and whatever we are doing. It doesn’t serve shoveling ditches well to do it in a custom fitted suit any more than it serves the Lord well to show up at Church in greasy, torn coveralls. For that matter, smiling when you should be frowning, cajoling when you should be spanking, and laying down when you should be standing up are all wrong. I think we learned too much in first grade from teachers letting us color outside the lines and then saying we did well in making the lion pink. Everywhere we look about everything we do turns up error in our ways. We are not true. But we are reparable by God’s devices. Between this day of error and that day of repair is a carpet of forbearance laid by God for us to walk upon in the spirit of confession, “I am wrong; God is right.” That spirit has little to do with whether or not anyone else is wrong or right. Then while we walk this carpet alone, we begin to realize the matter of importance is our repair at its end, not our reaching perfection in its middle. So all the misshapen misfit of our ways and efforts till then must serve adequately here on the carpet now, though not perfectly. By mere adequacy, then, rather than perfection, we are all one in love, because the only way we have to unite in a world saturated with error is by faith in His perfecting us then rather than by faith in some notion of being perfect now. It is comforting to know the perfect God accepts us certainly imperfect people who receive His righteousness only upon our confession of wrongness. (I John 1:9)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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