Startling Discoveries

Healing in His Hands

A startling discovery has been made in the area of public health.  Sometimes things surprise.  At other times, the surprise is so surprisey that one ends up staggering around in the daylight like a sleep deprived inebriate.  We still struggle to believe the scintillating insights delivered by a university health study.  Against all expectation the astute researchers made the completely unexpected discovery that obesity is caused by eating too much food. 

You have to have a PhD in social medicine and a second PhD in public health to enable such rarefied  discoveries to be made. 

When it comes to eating, consumers are biting off more than they can chew.  That's the finding a New Zealand study that confirms the link between energy food supply and the global obesity epidemic.  The findings, published today in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation, show that overeating is the driving force behind the global obesity epidemic in high-income countries like New Zealand. [TVNZ News]

The lead researcher was one Stephie Vandevijvere.  Her research is so startling and novel that it made the pages of the World Health Magazine.

Lead author Dr Stefanie Vandevijvere, from Auckland University's school of population health, analysed increases in the food energy supply and obesity in 69 countries.  She found that between 1971 and 2010 both body weight and food energy supply had increased in 81 per cent of the countries surveyed.

In 65 per cent of countries, mostly the wealthiest nations, the increase in food energy supply was more than enough to explain the increases in average body weight, Dr Vandevijvere said.  "Our study shows that oversupply of calories is a likely driver of over-consumption of those calories and can readily explain the weight gain seen in most countries," she said.

Who would have thought.  Obesity is caused by gluttony.  Why didn't we think of that?  Ah, yes, but the problem is more subtle and complex than that.  If were cruelly to allege that the present "epidemic" of obesity is the result of gluttony then you would be wrong.  Rather it is caused by too much food being produced.  It's the system's fault.  Just like drunkenness is caused by alcohol. Somehow that nasty stuff just jumped out of the bottle into one's belly.  No.  That would be misdirected causality.  Rather, as always, it is an environmental, macro.  And the solutions lie in changing the environment by means of rules, regulations, prohibitions, and rationing.

The researcher explains that this overeating is "not usually a conscious individual decision" and is instead usually driven by several factors in our food environment.  "One of these is likely to be the sheer quantity of palatable, ultra-processed food products available in the food supply," Dr Vandevijvere said.  "It creates a kind of push effect on our diet and we tend to subconsciously overeat on the calories and gain weight."

May we humbly beg to differ.  Gluttony is a sin.  It is an ethical issue.  Wikipedia helpfully points out:

The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, is a classification of vices (part of Christian ethics) that has been used since early Christian times to educate and instruct Christians concerning fallen humanity's tendency to sin. In the currently recognized version, the sins are usually given as wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. Each is a form of Idolatry-of-Self wherein the subjective reigns over the objective. [Emphasis, ours.]

Gluttony represents slavery to the flesh; it also manifests the sin of narcissism--an unhealthy, destructive pre-occupation with self.  

Hear, my son, and be wise,
    and direct your heart in the way.
Be not among drunkards
    or among gluttonous eaters of meat,
for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty,
    and slumber will clothe them with rags.  (Proverbs 23: 19-21)

and . . . 

The one who keeps the law is a son with understanding,
    but a companion of gluttons shames his father. (Proverbs 28:7)

So, the solution to this "epidemic" is not to reduce the food supply.  It is to confront the spiritual rebellion of our hearts against God.  But Dr Stephie disagrees.  Not with the idea that the problem is spiritual in nature.  No she firmly believes that.  It's just that she has a different god.  Her prayer and invocation is to Baal, the State:

The study was important because it offered governments more evidence to develop the right policies to reduce obesity, which is a risk factor for many health problems, including diabetes, heart disease, stroke and some cancers, she said. [Emphasis, ours]

Dr Stephie and the West in general cannot bear to face the truth.  The idea that "man is evil, born in sin" must never be countenanced for a nano-second.  The idea that ethical responsibility must be sheeted home to every member of the human race--the greatest wonder of God's creation, albeit it now mired in self-perpetuating rebellion against its Maker--must be denied and rejected at all costs.  Rather the blame, yet hope, must lie with Baal, the all powerful, all delivering state.

The campaigns and "research" of Dr Stephie and her cohorts will not succeed.  All the rules and regulations in the world cannot withstand the power of lust carefully nurtured in heart and home. The end game will be more and more calls for desperate actions by an impotent, ineffectual deity.  That end game will fail, miserably, with great suffering.

Meanwhile, in the East, a great light has arisen amongst the Gentiles.  Healing for mankind is in the hands of the King. His healing brings deliverance from enslaving lusts.  His healing enables the merry joys of eating and drinking to His glory, as His faithful bond-servant. His healing restores things to be the way they were always meant to be.   Selah.