Healthy Living
It must have come as an encouragement to many, already struggling under the burden of New Year's Resolutions to adopt a healthier lifestyle, to learn that perseverance in such matters can add up to 14 years to our lives. Research conducted among 20,000 people over the course of 10 years by Cambridge University and the Medical Research Council found that those who took regular exercise, ate five portions of fruit and vegetables each day, drank alcohol only in moderation and abstained from smoking were four times more likely to live out the decade than those who didn't.
Boots may have to rethink its apparently annual post-Christmas 'Change One Thing' ad campaign. Four things, it now seems, are needful for our physical salvation.
These findings are potentially good news for the promotion of a biblical perspective on the body. We have been created by God, in his image. It is, therefore, right that we should care for our bodies. Indeed, from a biblical point of view, is it not a great irony that this very age in which we have finally woken up to our responsibility to care for creation is the age of obesity?
According to the Bible, our bodies are also temples - temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). While this analogy undoubtedly adds theological weight to the need to care for our bodies, it also reminds us that, ultimately, life - real life - in all its fullness comes from God, as we encounter him in Christ and allow his Spirit to live in us.
What, then, constitutes a distinctively Christian, counter-cultural New Year's Resolution in regard to our health? What exactly should we be resolving if we agree with Paul that 'physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come' (1 Timothy 4:8)?
I can't help wondering if Paul himself hasn't already supplied us with a 'textbook answer'. How about this: 'I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain the resurrection from the dead' (Philippians 3:10f)?
OK, so it's a tougher lifestyle call than that advocated by the health researchers. But what good is it to gain 14 years yet forfeit life to the full for eternity?
Nigel Hopper
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