Ep 433 ｜ Healthy Body Image vs. Unhealthy Enabling ｜ Q&A
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Summary
Marriage is a covenant bond between a Christian and a believer. But what happens when a Christian husband decides that he no longer believes in the Christian faith? How do we deal with a husband who has turned away from the faith? What does the Bible say about this situation?
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today we are doing a Q&A episode. You guys sent me some
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questions on Instagram. I am going to answer them, some theological, some cultural, some
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political. I'm very excited to get into them. First question that we've got, how do you
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deal with a husband who has turned away from the faith? So you married a guy, he said he was a
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Christian, you were both following the Lord, or you both thought that you were following the Lord
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when you first got married. And then he decided that he was no longer going to be a part of the
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Christian faith. Maybe his faith was never genuine in the first place, or maybe he is just going
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through a season of doubt, a season of spiritual turmoil, a season of temptation, and the Lord is
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going to bring him back. As his wife, obviously your desire is that he knows Christ, not just so
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that he knows joy and he knows peace and he knows assurance today, but also so he is with God for
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all of eternity, for people that we love. That is our number one desire. That's our number one goal,
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is for them to know the gospel, for them to be reconciled to the holy God who made them.
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So what does the Bible have to say about this? The Bible does talk about not being unequally yoked
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with unbelievers, that we don't believe that we are, as Christians, to marry someone who
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is not a believer. Marriage is already hard. It can be already hard because life is hard and you go
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through seasons of difficulty, seasons of maybe tension, seasons of some kind of calamity in your
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life that can make marriage even harder than it already is. All kinds of relationships are
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difficult, but especially when you are in such close contact with the same person every day,
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you have an intimate relationship with them, you know everything about them, they know everything
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about you, you notice all of their tics, you know their habits, and you know their hangups.
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Of course, marriage is going to be hard because it's the wedding of two sinners. The Bible does tell
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us that love covers a multitude of sins, and we also realize that as Christians, we believe
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that marriage is a covenant bond. Matthew 19, Jesus in Matthew 19, in answering a question about divorce,
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he says, what God has joined together, let not man separate. And of course, he does give some
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reasons for divorce, but still we understand that it is a commitment that we make to another person
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through thick and thin. That is why we believe that it is, that's part of why we believe that it is
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better, that it is right, that it is obedient as a Christian to marry another Christian. Yes,
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of course, you may fall in love with someone who is not a believer, but those feelings of passion and
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all-consuming romance, they have to, they must, in a healthy way, transition into a steady kind
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of commitment, a kind of love that yes, sometimes is emotional, and yes, very often is passionate,
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but more often than not is actually a choice that you make to be committed to that person,
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to love that person as you love yourself, to choose that person over and over again. And so
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from the beginning, we do believe as Christians that a Christian should marry a Christian, that having
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that foundation of Christ is what makes the weathering, the thick and the thin possible,
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and not just possible, but joyful and glorifying and worth it. Now, if you marry a believer and then
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say a few years down the road or say a decade down the road, something happens and they have a crisis
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of faith and they say, you know, I don't know if I believe that anymore, what do you do? Or maybe
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you married someone when you were not a Christian and he was not a Christian, you became a Christian
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after marriage. He did not become a Christian after marriage. And of course, again, your chief
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desire is that they know Christ and that you can have a marriage that is reflective of Christ in
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the church. As Ephesians 5 says, you want them to know the joy and the freedom that you have now
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found in Christ. The Bible actually speaks to these kinds of situations in which the husband in
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particular is not a Christian, but the wife is. First Peter 1, 3, 2 through 3. Likewise, wives,
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be subject to your own husband so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be one without a
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word by the conduct of their wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct. So the fruit of
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the spirit coming out in your life, the fruit of the spirit that is defined by Galatians 6, the kind
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of spirit and respectfulness and purity that we see articulated in 1 Peter 1, that kind of conduct,
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that kind of behavior, the Bible tells us, can be used by the Holy Spirit to win over a husband
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to Christ. I don't think that means that you don't share the gospel. I don't think that means that you
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don't articulate that which is true. But what this passage is saying is that by being a godly wife that
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is first and foremost submissive to Christ and also in a respectful and a healthy way subject to your
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husband, that you actually make a really good case for the gospel. Now, I know for those of you
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listening, maybe you're new to the podcast or you just have a difficult time with that word subject or
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submit. Trust me, I understand as someone with a strong personality, someone who is independent, someone
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who has lots of opinions, someone who has always struggled with that word that I see in the Bible,
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submit to your husbands, be subject to your husbands. I hear you. I feel you. I know exactly what you're
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thinking. I know exactly how you are feeling. But if you go to Ephesians 5 and you see the command
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again reiterated that women are supposed to submit to their husbands as to the Lord, you will also see
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a command for the husband, that the husband is supposed to love his wife as Christ loves the
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church. Well, Christ died for the church. Christ laid down his life for the church. The responsibility of
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the husband to love his wife is much more cumbersome, much bigger than the wife's responsibility to
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submit to her husband. That doesn't mean it's not hard. That doesn't mean that it's not difficult,
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that it doesn't rub up against our pride. But men are not off the hook. Men are held to an extremely
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high standard, a Christ-like standard of self-sacrificial love and care that they are supposed to demonstrate
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in marriage. And yes, wives are supposed to submit to our husbands. Now, what does it mean to
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actually submit to our husbands? Well, as we can see from the description in Ephesians 5, it certainly
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doesn't mean this kind of master and servant kind of relationship. It's not a dictator and his subject.
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That is not what it looks like in a Christian marriage. Of course, we believe that women can be
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able to speak up, that of course we have opinions and that we make decisions and that we have
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responsibility. It is not this kind of handmaiden situation. It is the husband is the leader
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spiritually of the family and is leading the family in a direction towards being God glorifying
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in every area of their life. At the end of the day, he is going to be held responsible for the decisions
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made for the family. That does not mean that the wife doesn't have a say. As you can imagine,
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I have a lot of say about a lot of different things. And my husband is wonderful and we do
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so many things together. At the end of the day, I am going to trust him as someone who is following
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Christ to make the best ultimate decisions for our family. That's what that means. And I try to be as
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respectful as possible. That doesn't mean, again, that I feel like I have to be a church mouse in
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any way. And as we've talked about before, this kind of language, this kind of command to women
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in the times that these epistles were being written would have been like balm to the weary soul for
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women because they were looking out in culture and they were seeing women objectify. They were seeing
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women used as sexual objects. They were seeing women being used and abused by their husbands. They would
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see them being discarded or tossed aside when the husband wants to sleep with a servant or sleep
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with a prostitute. Women were not highly regarded in a lot of these secular communities in which
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Christians were living. And so for Paul to say to the church at Ephesus, hey, husbands, it's not just
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the wife that has a responsibility to act a certain way as a Christian. You have a huge responsibility.
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And that responsibility is to be like Christ, to cherish them, to love your wife,
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to sacrifice yourself for your wife, to lay yourself down for your wife. That would have been radical at
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the time. For women to hear that, wow, my husband has a responsibility to be faithful and to be loving
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and to be gentle and to be kind and to be sacrificial towards me, that he's on the hook by God to treat me a
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certain way, to behave a certain way. That would have been very different from what the culture was
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teaching and from what traditional religion had taught up until that time. So now, of course,
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our feminist proclivities say, oh, submission, subjection, that sounds so terrible. But to
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the Christian woman at this time, hearing that marriage is actually a refuge for her, actually a
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safe place for her, a place where she is going to be, should be loved and respected, even as she loves
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and respects her husband, would have been really good news. And it should be good news for us.
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The Bible tells us that in doing that, in showing our husbands what it means to be a Christ-like and
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a godly wife, even if that husband is not being a godly and a Christ-like husband yet, that that is
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actually very persuasive. James 5.16 also says, therefore, confess your sins to one another and
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pray for one another that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power
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as it is working. So of course, we believe that another solution to this or something else that
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we are called to do if we want someone to come to Christ, especially someone that we love as much as
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our husband, is to pray for them, is to pray that the Lord would save them, that pray that the Lord
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would soften their hearts. Yes, you can pray also that people will come into their lives, that a mentor
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would come into their lives, that there would be other people who surround him that share with him
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the gospel and make the gospel of Christ attractive by their godly behavior. But ultimately, it's going
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to be God who turns the heart of stone to the heart of flesh. And the prayer of a righteous person,
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which all Christians are righteous because it's not our righteousness, it's Christ's righteousness
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given to us. It has great power. So that's my long-winded answer to the first question.
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Let's move on to the second question. The second question is saying the gospel is sufficient,
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divisive. I think that's a wonderful question. And my answer to it is yes and no. So I think where this
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is coming from is that there is a debate among, in particular, evangelical Christians about so-called
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racial reconciliation and what is called racial justice. So we hear from a certain sphere of
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evangelical Christians that, okay, we need to adopt some of critical race theory. We need to look to
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the world a little bit when it comes to what racial justice should look like. We might need to link arms
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somewhat with Black Lives Matter. We at least don't need to condemn or criticize those people. We
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actually do need the government. We do need monetary reparations. We do need a little bit of these
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secular ideologies to kind of help us along in the way of racial justice and racial reconciliation.
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Now, some of them might not say that explicitly, but there are certainly plenty of Christians who
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learn from Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi and who have adopted more of their language and definitions
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of equity and social justice and so-called racial justice than anything that aligns with scripture.
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And the response to that kind of movement has been, hey, the gospel is enough. When you're talking
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about the problem of racism, the gospel is the only thing that can get rid of racism. The question is
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not whether, and this is where things get lost. The question has never been within Christianity about
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whether or not racism exists. We all know that it exists because we understand that hate in the human
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heart exists and that can manifest itself in a variety of ways that end in ism. It could be racism.
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It could be ableism. It could be sexism. This could all be hatred of a particular kind of person
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because of some sort of immutable characteristic. These are all forms of hate that reside
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in the human heart. So there's never been a question of whether or not racism exists. There
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has been a question of to what extent. So in 2021, or just even in recent history, is systemic racism.
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That means racism down to the core of what America is that infects all of the systems. Is that still
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alive and well today? Is that to blame for the disparities that we see between white groups and
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black groups? That has been a big debate that we have obviously engaged in many times on this podcast.
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And then the other debate is, okay, well, what do we do about it? Like, is it possible? What is racial
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reconciliation? How do we reconcile one group with one melanin count with another group of another
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melanin count? Are these kind of like monolithic groups based on skin color? And what does that
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actually look like? And so there have been a lot of Christians who have said, well, the gospel is
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sufficient for that. Like, if you have hate in your heart, the gospel is sufficient to take care of
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that because we agree that racism is wrong. The Bible says in 1 John that you cannot love God and hate
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your brother. So for any reason, whether it's because of his race or nationality or because of
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his ability or disability, because of his socioeconomic status, you cannot hate God and
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love your brother. Or you cannot love God and hate your brother, rather. And so we believe in
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repenting of that. We believe in righting that wrong, absolutely. But our belief is that only the
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gospel can do that, that only the gospel, only God, only the Holy Spirit can change your heart.
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And we actually believe that critical race theory, that Black Lives Matter, is not aiding and abetting
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any sort of real civil rights movement, but is actually hindering any sort of gospel-centered
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progress that we could have as a church because it takes on secular, anti-God ideologies in order to
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accomplish goals that we don't think are either realistic or just. Their definition of justice
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doesn't align with God's definition of justice. And so that is kind of the debate. And what you'll
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hear from the other side, so one side says, look, the gospel is the only thing that can make racism go
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away. The gospel is the only thing that can reconcile two people together. Ephesians 2 tells us that
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when it's talking about the Gentiles and Jewish people, how—
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the cross, it tore down that dividing wall of hostility. And so if the cross can tear down the
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dividing wall of hostility between Gentiles and Jews who come together through the gospel, then
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certainly it has the power to tear down the dividing wall of hostility between two races that both share
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the name of Christ. But you will hear more social justice-minded Christians say, well, you say the gospel
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is enough when it comes to racism, but why isn't the gospel enough when it comes to abortion? And so
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they see this as a kind of hypocrisy or an excuse for apathy. And what I would say to that then is that
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it is yes and no. So the gospel is sufficient to change hearts, but we do. We do believe that
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something actually has to be done to right wrongs and to fix injustice. And we know that Micah 6,
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8 tells us to seek justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. Matthew 25, 40 says,
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and the king will answer them, truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these of
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least of these my brothers, you did it to me. And so obviously we know that the gospel compels us to
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action. The gospel compels us to do something. The gospel compels us to love justice, to seek
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justice, to enact justice, to alleviate the oppression of the oppressed. And so that's
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absolutely true. And we see that really well when we see the anti-abortion movement within
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Christianity, how we don't just, you know, stand outside of abortion clinics and pray and plead with
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women who are about to have their child killed. But there are pro-life clinics that are run by
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Christians across the country that don't just help women keep their baby. They don't just provide
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ultrasounds and pregnancy tests and prenatal vitamins, which is all very important. But they
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also provide everything that this woman and her child needs for afterbirth as well. This whole idea
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that pro-lifers are just pro-birth is such a myth. I mean, provide them with immigration help,
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provide them with refuge if they're in an abusive situation, provide them with financial help,
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provide them with Medicare help, provide them with parenting classes, with different forms of
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education, with free baby supplies. I mean, these Christian pro-life pregnancy centers do everything
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for these expecting moms to love them in a way that is both tangible and in a way that is spiritual.
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So obviously, we believe that when it comes to abortion, that there is some action behind it.
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And so it is a good question to say, well, then why don't we say the gospel is sufficient for that
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and just let it be? But we do say that for something like racism or systemic racism.
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And it goes back to some of those debatable questions. The question is, to what extent does
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the racism, systemic racism, institutional racism that has existed historically in this country,
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historically in some parts of the evangelical church, to what extent does it actually affect
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and oppress people today? And to have that conversation, like you have to be able to look
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at data, like you have to be able to look at history. You have to be able to look at some kind
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of empirical evidence as well as people's experiences, as well as people's stories and testimonies.
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But I think the most important thing is that when we are looking to solutions, when we are looking
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to ways to actually reconcile, we have to look to the Bible's definition of what justice looks like.
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This is the big problem. It's not that I don't believe that we should do nothing about racism
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where it actually exists. My problem is within that conversation, there's a lack of specificity
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and there are a lack of biblical solutions when it comes to that conversation.
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And there's also a lack of truth. Like we've talked about the false narrative surrounding
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racialized police brutality, surrounding some of the arguments that we hear today for why the
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black family has deteriorated since the 1960s. Everything is tied back to this view of the legacy
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of slavery. And that just doesn't hold up against history. Like we've talked about that kind of
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stuff before. So I think that's part of the problem is that there's a lot of, there are false
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narratives surrounding this conversation, both within the church and outside of the church.
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And then the solutions that are offered in the way of actual justice are not biblical solutions.
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Critical race theory, which asserts that if you are white, you're on the side of the oppressor.
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If you're black, you're on the side of the oppressed. And that intersectionality categorizes you
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this way, assigning you a certain oppression point based on your immutable characteristics and certain
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kinds of identity. That kind of mentality skews our idea of what justice and what reconciliation
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actually look like. And that manifests itself in the church as preaching a gospel of repentance for
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racism to all white people and preaching a much gentler, a much softer and incomplete gospel
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and enabling gospel to people who are not white. That is a kind of partiality that God speaks against
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time and again, especially in the book of James in the Bible. And so we're seeing, I think, within the
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church trying to make up for past partiality with current partiality against white people, preaching a
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different gospel to white people than you preach to black people, taking on secular solutions to
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spiritual problems. And so I understand that, yes, seeking justice, loving mercy does mean that the
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gospel compels us to action. But the question is, what are the actual problems today? And what are the
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actual biblical solutions? Remember, justice according to God is impartial. It's impartial. It is direct.
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It is truthful. It is proportional. Starting with truthful, you can look at Exodus 23, 1-3 that says,
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you shall not spread a false report. Leviticus 19, 15, you shall, if you want to look at impartiality, you
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shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but in righteousness you shall judge your neighbor.
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Deuteronomy 19, 15-21 speaks to God's concern with truth, impartiality, proportionality, and directness.
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Acts 10-34, Peter is preaching the gospel to Gentiles and says that God shows no partiality.
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James 2 talks about the sin of partiality. And so we see throughout Scripture that God's definition
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of what is right and what is wrong, God's definition of justice is marked by impartiality. And I think
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what we're seeing today is a different treatment of white people and non-white people in the hopes that
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this is going to lead us to equity and reconciliation. And that is the beef. Like, that's the big beef
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between Christians. Not whether or not racism exists. Not even whether or not the gospel is
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sufficient. But whether or not the Bible speaks clearly enough to this issue or whether we need
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to be adopting definitions of social justice from Black Lives Matter. So I think that this conversation
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gets very muddled, but I hope that I offered some clarity on what is actually being disagreed upon
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when one side says that the gospel is sufficient. Because it is true, 2 Peter 1-3 says,
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His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the
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knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence. And so again, that's not an excuse
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for apathy or for complacency or for not doing something. But we need to ask ourselves,
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what are the real problems before us? And what is the truth behind these narratives that are being
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pushed about systemic racism, for example, or about police brutality? What does the data say? What
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does the truth say? What does history actually say? What are the different perspectives on this? We can
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look at those things while still being compassionate and listening to people's stories and experiences.
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And then how does the gospel, how does scripture inform us to actually right real legitimate wrongs?
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And let's be extremely specific and scriptural in how we do that.
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So this is another question. I think it's really interesting. Difference between healthy boundaries
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and cancel culture. So boundaries is a word that we're hearing a lot about in the self
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and the self-care, self-love world right now. And I do think it's important to have certain healthy
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boundaries in your life. I do think that that can turn into this kind of narcissistic mentality of
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claiming everyone who doesn't serve you perfectly in that moment is toxic. But of course, we believe
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in boundaries and friendships. We believe in boundaries and relationships before marriage. There are some
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relationships and situations. Work-life balance is another example of boundaries.
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But boundaries should never be used as an excuse for narcissism, an excuse for selfishness,
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an excuse to put off thinking of other people or elevating the interest of other people above your
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own, because that's exactly what Philippians tells us to do, is to look also to the interests of other
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people, to consider other people as more important than ourselves. And so while I do think it's important
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to have boundaries in certain ways and certain contexts, we also have to just be really honest
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with ourselves and make sure that we're not using that term boundaries as an excuse to, you know, call
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everything that we don't like in that moment or everything that inconveniences us or burdens us in
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any way toxic. Now, the difference between healthy boundaries and cancel culture, I think we totally have the
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ability to choose who we want to support, choose what we want to buy from. I don't think that you
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have to follow someone who doesn't align with your values. You don't have to buy their product. If they
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say something that you don't like or that you don't believe in, you can absolutely unfollow them. You can
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absolutely stop supporting them. And I don't think that's cancel culture at all. That's voting with your
00:26:23.880
dollar, in a sense. That is deciding where you want to spend your money. That is absolutely
00:26:29.900
a product of living in a free society. And I think that that's fine. Where it turns into cancel
00:26:38.100
culture is when you decide that you're going to orchestrate a campaign against this person or a
00:26:43.300
campaign against their advertisers because they said something that you don't like. Or you're going
00:26:47.660
to try to swarm their Yelp page with negative comments. Or you're going to try to stick to the mob on
00:26:52.700
their comment section on their Instagram. Or you're going to try in any way to destroy their
00:26:59.100
lives or to destroy their livelihood. I think that there's a difference in doing this, by the way,
00:27:04.700
or extracting these kinds of malicious targeted campaigns against an individual or a small business
00:27:09.640
and trying to pressure like a major million billion dollar company like Netflix to take off content that
00:27:17.080
you see as inappropriate. So I think there's also a distinction between people like raising
00:27:22.000
raising heck about the gross cuties movie and cancel culture. You're not trying to ruin anyone's life.
00:27:32.060
You're not trying to enact vengeance in any way against someone. You are just expressing your
00:27:42.520
dismay. And you are trying to influence a company in a particular way. You're not actually trying to
00:27:49.500
cancel anything or anyone in particular. You're not trying to ruin anyone's life. Cancel culture is
00:27:56.700
digging up something from someone's past, trying to hold them to a standard because of a mistake that
00:28:03.140
you don't hold yourself to or double standards based on that person's politics. Or you are trying to
00:28:12.720
have them canceled or have their life ruined because of their religious views or because of their
00:28:17.560
political views. And again, this is not just not supporting them anymore. This is trying to hurt
00:28:23.920
them, trying to destroy them either financially or physically in some way, get them fired. Like that
00:28:31.100
is a form of vindictive cancel culture that we've unfortunately seen in all kinds of totalitarian
00:28:36.720
societies for the past 100 years. And it's from Satan. Like it is from the pit of hell. And it's not
00:28:43.940
something that Christians should be a part of. Again, that doesn't mean that we cannot not support
00:28:49.860
someone that we don't align with. But yeah, I unfollow people. I unfollow bloggers. I unfollow
00:28:55.180
influencers. I try to not shop certain places because I don't want to support them. I don't
00:29:02.160
want to give my money there. But I'm not trying to ruin their lives. I'm not trying to say that they
00:29:07.100
shouldn't have a right to say what they want to say or believe what they want to believe. I'm not
00:29:11.280
trying to get them canceled in any way. And so I think there's a really big difference. And when
00:29:15.620
people say that there's not a big difference, they're typically just trying to gaslight you.
00:29:20.420
Like they're trying to make the conversation more confusing than it actually is so that you will say,
00:29:26.380
okay, well, maybe cancel culture is fine. Like maybe being scared to speak up about my conservative
00:29:31.220
or Christian views. Maybe that's not cancel culture. Maybe it's fine. People on the left do not fear for
00:29:37.140
the most part saying their views. Like there's nothing off limits, mostly for the left that will
00:29:42.520
get you canceled by the left. Like you can be a communist. You can be the most sexually depraved,
00:29:49.380
deviant person in the world. Like you can be as far left as in love with Stalin as you possibly want to
00:29:55.660
be. And you're not going to be canceled by the left. You're going to be fine. Or you can have enough
00:30:01.900
like anti-racist or social justice street creds like Joe Biden or like Ibram X. Kendi,
00:30:09.040
where if you say something that's potentially problematic, you're not going to be canceled
00:30:13.800
or raked over the coals for it because you are too useful to that side. So when Ibram X. Kendi said
00:30:19.720
that he was terrified when his daughter came home and said that she wants to be a boy and that he
00:30:25.180
realized that maybe they had made a mistake and not, you know, elevating the goodness of being a girl
00:30:30.280
enough, he's not going to be canceled for that because he's Ibram X. Kendi. Joe Biden can say
00:30:34.300
all of the racist stuff in the world for the past 20 plus 50 years of his life and he can have all of
00:30:42.400
all of the gaffes and it's not going to matter because he is youthful to the left. So those double
00:30:49.000
standards also speak to a cancel culture that I'm not saying doesn't exist ever at all on the right,
00:30:54.360
but it is being dominated by people on the left to very much believe that they are the tolerant ones,
00:31:01.760
even though they are some of the most intolerant people in in the world. Let's see. I'll do one more.
00:31:12.700
OK, so this is this is a question that I get a lot. How do we deal with this assertion that being
00:31:19.060
overweight or being obese is actually healthy? And I always want to be super sensitive about this
00:31:25.560
because to be perfectly honest, like I think that a lot of the body positivity movement is
00:31:30.400
really good. I actually think that it's very healthy. I think that for a very long time,
00:31:36.220
we have had unrealistic standards of what it means to be a woman. And I'm not sure if that's been forever
00:31:41.660
in the history of advertising and media, but certainly for the past, I don't know, 50 or so years,
00:31:47.200
there have been ever changing and at times unrealistic and double standards for women when
00:31:53.360
it comes to representation of how we should look. And I do think it can be very damaging for
00:32:00.480
self-esteem, especially when it comes to social media, like the age of kids on social media is
00:32:05.780
getting younger and younger. And the things that they see and the examples that they are told to look
00:32:10.360
to are still very unhealthy. I think that it's great when a fitness company has someone
00:32:16.640
modeling their clothes that has cellulite. Like I think it's great to have models that aren't
00:32:22.500
perfectly thin, that don't have all of the just quote, right proportions that have just like normal
00:32:29.040
bodies. Because the truth is you don't have to be a size two to be beautiful. You don't have to be a
00:32:33.980
size two to be healthy. Like you don't necessarily have to look a certain way in order to show that you
00:32:42.640
take care of your body. There are people who work out every day and eat really healthy and are never
00:32:47.480
going to be a size two. They're never going to have, you know, stick skinny thighs or they're never
00:32:53.480
going to have super toned arms. That's just how God made their bodies. And I do think it's okay to
00:32:58.340
have better representation. I think it's great to have better representation of reality when it comes
00:33:03.980
to that sort of thing on social media and in advertising. Now we as a society have the propensity
00:33:10.020
to overcorrect. Like progressivism, even if you just wanted to see it in the most charitable terms,
00:33:16.820
or if you wanted to see it that way, then you would just call it the ideology of overcorrection.
00:33:22.900
And I do think progressivism is an important compliment to conservatism. I don't, I think
00:33:27.840
when it dominates, it becomes very absurd and cruel, but it can be a good compliment to conservatism
00:33:34.340
because it can question things that actually need to be questioned. The problem with progressivism is
00:33:38.700
that it questions things that doesn't need to be questioned. And it pulls it in the opposite
00:33:42.100
direction in an effort to correct. And it never actually knows where it's going. And then it ends
00:33:46.820
up just ruining the thing that it tried to correct. And then we just swing back to the other direction.
00:33:51.680
And I'm afraid that is what is going to happen with this body positivity movement. It's like,
00:33:56.420
we can never just swing the pendulum into like a healthy middle spot. We always have to swing it the
00:34:02.420
other direction. And I think we're seeing that, um, with like covers of magazines and with different
00:34:09.580
spreads in, um, in magazines and different pictures on social media saying that being obese is totally
00:34:18.080
healthy and being obese, um, is, is fine. It's something that doesn't have any indication of how
00:34:24.620
healthy someone is. And that's just not true. Like that's just the denial of science. Like I said,
00:34:30.080
of course, it's true that you may not be a size two and you could be amazingly healthy. You could
00:34:36.580
be way more healthy than the person who is a size two. But of course we know that it, when you get
00:34:41.100
to a certain weight, that your chances of heart disease go up, your chances of diabetes go up,
00:34:47.140
your chances of all kinds of fatal illnesses go up when you get to an unhealthy weight. And so if we
00:34:53.680
believe that our bodies as Christians, we don't believe that our bodies belong to us, but they belong to
00:34:59.860
God and that our body is a temple, a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit, as first Corinthians 6, 19 says,
00:35:05.400
then we do feel that we have a responsibility to treat our bodies well, to treat our bodies with
00:35:10.140
respect. Um, and again, I think that there is a balance there. I don't think that that means that
00:35:15.640
you never eat ice cream or that you never indulge yourself in any way. These are wonderful gifts of,
00:35:20.380
of common grace. If I believed that as a Christian, I couldn't eat ice cream. Oh, that would be very,
00:35:25.580
very sad, especially during pregnancy. Um, but I think that there's a balance there that we treat
00:35:31.060
our bodies with discipline. We treat our bodies with respect. Um, but we also realize that we don't
00:35:35.980
idolize our bodies. We try to be as scientific as we possibly can when it comes to dieting and things
00:35:42.200
like that. And we don't overcorrect going to a place that is just fantasy that says that you can
00:35:48.500
gain any amount of weight and you're still going to be just as healthy as if you weren't obese.
00:35:52.900
That's just not true. That's not how, that's not how God made us. That doesn't mean that people
00:35:57.160
who are obese are not beautiful or that they're not valuable or that they're not made in the image
00:36:01.820
of God or that they're any worse than me or you. That's not saying that at all. Um, that's just
00:36:06.880
saying that God designed our bodies to function a certain way and that we have to be as balanced
00:36:10.920
and as healthy in how we look at our bodies and how we treat our bodies as possible. So that's my
00:36:16.000
nuanced view, if you will. All right, that's all I've got time for today. We will be back here soon.