Wellness as Wisdom

Proverbs 1:20-33 is a very strongly worded instruction to make wise choices. Of course, each of us does that to the best of our ability.

Sometimes we do not see an obvious “wise” choice, so we might decide based on preference. For example, should I choose a Chevrolet, Ford, or Dodge pickup? Just about anyone in the country can answer that question, but the answers won’t all agree. People can do whatever they want much of the time with little ill effect.

In Luke 11:12, Jesus asked whether a father will give his child a scorpion when he asked for an egg – that is a much clearer choice. The benefit of one and the harm of the other make it obvious which is the wise choice. Some wisdom is easy.

When it comes to decisions about wellness, there is a similar pattern. Some of the choices are matters of preference, while others are critical. The easy choice is to continue doing what we’ve always done – and we can expect to get what we’ve always gotten. Although we in the US spend far more per person than other leading nations, we rank only 37th in the world in health care system performance.1 The more difficult and critical path is to choose what works and to have the discipline to follow it. We can get some information from professionals and some from personal investigation. Especially with the availability of Internet research, hardly any knowledge is beyond our reach once we look for it.

From all that I’ve found, the choice among wellness plans is much like the choice of pickup. Different strokes for different folks, but all carry the same load. Next month, let’s look at some results of a few of the many effective ways to approach wellness.

The decision whether to adopt a wellness plan is more like the scorpion and egg situation. Every resource I have found concludes that the rich Western diet is one factor in much of the disease that we see now. It is very obvious in the Far East – as Japan and China move toward a Western-style diet and the frantic lifestyle of city life, the formerly rare Western diseases are becoming all too common. Let’s reverse the world-wide trend and choose wellness! (In case you wonder if I believe in salvation by diet, NO! I believe that in Christ we have the freedom to choose any food without sin; rather, our choices are a matter of stewardship of the resource of wellness.)

1. T Colin Campbell, Ph.D., The China Study, Benbella Books, Dallas: 2004, p 17