A Weighty Issue For The Church

Read this.

Now read this.

Do you see an issue here that the church should be address­ing? Because I do. In fact, I’m quite wor­ried both that the church is not address­ing this issue and that it might be hard for he church (maybe harder for some sec­tions than others) to face up to it.

What I am talk­ing about is the prob­lem of obesity (which is far from just a west­ern, or developed nation prob­lem). Child­hood obesity is an alarm­ing prob­lem. The cost to health­care of obesity related dis­eases is going to change the face of public policy and health­care. The cul­ture of weight con­trol is only going to harden.

Make no mis­take, weight-control is the new smoking control.

Forget fad­dish diets; the phar­ma­col­isa­tion of weight­con­trol (through new drugs) is going to rad­ic­ally alter the issue. Moreover, the med­ical pro­fes­sion, backed up by politi­cians (and to a cer­tain degree investors and the legal pro­fes­sions) will change the whole way soci­et­ies think about obesity.

Alarm­ingly the church could well end up look­ing very hypo­crit­ical on this point! Why? Because the church so often makes black and white pro­nounce­ments on moral issues because “the Bible says so,” but in prac­tice is quite soft on the issue of weight and obesity. For­give me if I offend, but child­hood obesity is (in most cases) a par­ental fail­ure and the Bible has a lot to say about good par­ent­ing. Obesity is not always the result of glut­tony (an import­ant point), but let’s be honest, it fre­quently is. The Bible is noth­ing but harsh on glut­tony and there is a rich vein of theo­lo­gical reflec­tion on it, yet the church today is cau­tious on the topic (or just ignores it). Also, it is import­ant for the church to have a pas­toral dis­course for those strug­gling with their weight, or feel­ing ali­en­ated because of it (a prob­lem that will only grow).

A few weeks back I tried to start a dis­cus­sion on this topic on a Chris­tian forum and whilst there may have been some fault in my present­a­tion of the issue there was no ques­tion that some respond­ents were very sens­it­ive about the topic. My point is not in anyway to ridicule or harass anyone strug­gling with their weight. I’ve been there and struggled with the prob­lem myself. Rather I’m con­cerned to point to a healthy dir­ec­tion and I want to encour­age and enable the church to have a voice on this issue, given the cent­ral role it will play in cul­tural debates in the next decade.

In my view we need to resur­rect our theo­logy of glut­tony and develop a theo­logy (and ethic) of obesity. For thinkers inter­ested in theo­logy and cul­ture this is one of the hot­test topics going around. It may well be the issue that defines a generation.

Tech­nor­ati Tags: Glut­tony, Obesity