Purposeful Wellness

The essence of chastity is not the suppression of lust, but the total orientation of one's life towards a goal. -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

This is the cure for any bad habit, whether a sexual addiction, smoking, or cursing. When your life is totally focused on a worthy goal, there is no room for distractions. It is when one has no purpose in life that there is so much slack that it is easy to fall into habits that are undesirable.

Consider a rope passing through pulleys. When there is a load at the end, the rope is taut and passes through each pulley without any tendency to bind. It is only when the rope is slack that it drifts off and becomes tangled in a pulley. Too much tension will break the rope, but too little tension allows the rope to go where it doesn’t belong. So it is with life. When I am guided by a sufficient purpose, I am willing and anxious to shed anything that hinders my progress. But when I wander aimlessly, it is not difficult at all to pick up habits that are offensive.

Some years ago, I spent a couple of years in Asia. Others around me found the distance from home liberating – although they had wives or fiancées back home, they felt free to set up housekeeping with a locally available “temporary wife”. With my focus on a lifetime marriage and my commitment to a life in Christ, I was never tempted to even think about such an action. Even when sent to the Korean equivalent to a geisha house and assigned a “hostess”, it was no struggle for me to keep my hands and my mind where they belonged – and it made an interesting story to tell my wife later. (It also earned a reprimand from my boss to the person who put me in that awkward situation.)

What does this have to do with wellness? Everything! Much of the unwellness around us derives from habits developed because of lack of purpose. There is adequate information available that reveals that our choice of food is a significant factor in the state of our health, but the pleasure of the taste and the force of social custom keep many folks trapped in unhealthy habits. For most folks, the awakening comes only when a disease becomes life-threatening, or at least serious enough to get attention, and then it may be too late.

That is why I focus on stewardship. Most Christians understand that all we have has been given to us by God, for us to use for His glory. In the same way that He has provided our treasure, our time, and our talent for us to use wisely and in ways that honor Him, He also has provided our bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit. That temple is just as much an object of stewardship as our treasure. Any believer who truly wants to live a life pleasing to Christ will want to serve Him all life long. Many of those who neglect this aspect of stewardship will find themselves trapped in bodies that don’t work any more. Rather than being able to minister to others and share the wisdom gained over a lifetime of service, they become the object of ministry by others. Rather than having financial resources to use to support ministry, they have to use those resources to maintain their bodies in a functional state. No, wellness is not required for salvation. But it is a matter of good stewardship.

The Lord Provides!
Myron Remington
Myron62@juno.com