"A Gospel of Fitness"
G. Lloyd Rediger
A Gospel of Fitness is emerging from the cacophony of medical statistics, exercise-diet commercials, and common sense reactions of some Americans. This is a message particularly important for organized religion. We can sense the need for a values-oriented perspective on indulgent lifestyles and attitudes in our society. And it is apparent that we need a convincing corrective, for our unfitness has become normal. Who will lead us out of our normalcy?
In a public statement recently, David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., the former Surgeon General of the United States, said he hopes clergy will help lead the crusade for health just as they helped lead the civil rights movement a generation ago. However, organized religion, with a few exceptions, has been avoiding this opportunity. For some reason we shy away from related issues such as healing, healthcare, fitness, and even any prophetic utterances regarding the stewardship of our personhood. Perhaps a nascent Gospel of Fitness offers a useful reference.
We do have a tradition and a calling to such a mission. For until sometime around the Renaissance, the church was the reference point for healing and health. The Old Testament reflects the heritage of concern for health in Judaism, and Jesus devoted a major proportion of his recorded ministry as a healer and personal trainer in health of body, mind, and spirit. Yet in the dualistic thinking of traditional theology we have found tacit approval for assigning physical health concerns to medical practitioners, mental health concerns to mental health practitioners, and if there is anything of human personhood left over, that is probably our responsibility.
We can do better than this. If we review our theology, we can remind ourselves that salvation-peace (“shalom”) includes healing, healthcare, and healthful stewardship of the geofamily and this living planet. And clergy are better prepared and positioned than we realize for partnership with medical and mental health practitioners.
After attending one of the recent national conferences on “Spirituality and Healing,” sponsored by Harvard Medical School, I was riding to the airport in a van full of medical professionals. As we began to talk I identified myself as a pastoral counselor. A cardiologist sitting across from me almost shouted, “Where are you guys when we need you?” The rest of the ride included a lively discussion of the need for closer teamwork between clergy and medical professionals. This conference had featured approximately one hundred and fifty scientific studies of what happens in healing and health when spirituality is consciously a part of treatment and recovery. The research statistics clearly demonstrated the value of religious faith and practice in human health. Presenters at this conference included physician-researchers such as Herbert Benson, Larry Dossey, and Dale Matthews, along with noted practitioners from other healing traditions. Medical practitioners were encouraged to take the religious faith of patients seriously, including conversations about their faith, and even prayers as part of “bedside manner.”
As I returned home I again felt the urgency for spiritual leaders, medical practitioners, and mental health professionals to be in dialogue. For though we all give lipservice to the wholistic perspective, each field has become a turf, meaning that considerable courage, mutual respect, and visionary conviction are required for development of teamwork. It seems that medical practitioners are leading the way, at least in the public sector. Many medical schools now have courses on spirituality and health, while only a handful of seminaries offer a course on healing. And, in a sudden reversal of perspective, the American Psychological Association is featuring journal articles on spirituality. It was reassuring to me, as I did the research for my latest book (Fit To Be A Pastor: A Call To Physical, Mental & Spiritual Fitness, Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), to note the spiritual emphasis among the notables in physical fitness (Kenneth Cooper, Ray Kybartus, Dean Ornish, et al.), in mental fitness (Howard Clinebell, Scott Peck, Joan Borysenko, et al.), and in spiritual fitness (Morton Kelsey, Gary Collins, Margaret Kornfeld, et al.). We now have a critical mass available in which to generate a Gospel of Fitness with the best insights from all the helping professions. It is clear that we need more prophetic voices from organized religion if the church and synagogue are to be equal partners in America’s quest for fitness.
OUR SICKNESS
Not long ago, in a column by Jack Anderson and Douglas Cohn, it was reported that Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman is planning a national summit to explore all types of solutions to the American problem of obesity. Is this a spiritual issue? The Journal of the American Medical Association recently devoted an entire issue to this subject. Are religious professionals, seminaries, and denominational offices ready to focus this kind of attention on the physical and mental salvation of Americans, as well as on preserving their souls?
According to David Satcher, our Surgeon General, Americans are missing the goal of national fitness he recommended when he became our nation’s top medical official. His report indicates that 55 percent of Americans are seriously overweight and 62 percent do not exercise enough for good health. The World Health Organization notes that we lead the developed world in incidence of all the major killer and disabling diseases except AIDS. And according to Judith Stern, vice president of the American Obesity Association, we are in a national emergency. For 300,000 Americans die every year from being overweight, which she defines as thirty pounds over a weight normal for a person’s height, age, and gender. In the last seven years there has been a 50 percent increase in the prevalence of obesity in both sexes, every age, race, education level, and smoking status. Even one-fourth of our children are now obese. Does this issue rank with organized religion’s contemporary concern for social justice and poverty?
In 1998 the United States spent well over one trillion dollars on health (sickness) care. Much of this enormous cost was unnecessary. For a significant proportion of these costs are due to indulgent lifestyles and poor selfcare. We spend 26 billion dollars each year on weight loss programs, yet 92 percent of persons involved regain the lost weight quickly. We spend 20 billion dollars on cardio-vascular surgical procedures even though the benefits of bypass and angioplasty are shortlived without lifestyle changes. We spend enormous amounts for antacid remedies when eating less would eliminate much gastric discomfort. Now we know that nutritional supplements do not compensate for living on fast foods. We are learning that inadequate exercise makes bodily functions too sluggish for good health. We realize that in order to have a healthy mind we need less anxiety, less mental junk food, with more creativity and healthy relationships. In addition, national polls and bestseller lists reveal our almost desperate yearning for spiritual nurture and values. Does organized religion see an opportunity here?
The inertia of normalcy (our entitlement thinking) locks many into unfitness, even in the congregation. We seem trapped by our habits, which are now directed by consumerism towards comfort and pleasure, rather than freed for mission. Our advertising genius has produced mediathink, which makes taste-good, look-good, feel-good a national attitude, no matter what Jesus taught. And when our excesses produce pain and anxiety, we can pop a pill or pay someone to make us feel better. This kind of denial and self-deception erodes our spiritual disciplines and ministries.
These statistics and observations regarding our physical selves are also clues to our mental and spiritual fitness. Obesity is clearly related to mental attitude and thought patterns. While genetics and medical conditions influence body weight, it is clear that much of obesity is due in large part to overeating, which reflects poor nutrition and exercise patterns, as well as unhealthy eating habits. The point is that physical and mental aspects of ourselves are closely related, as we are now learning. It may be less obvious that spirituality and physical conditions are interrelated.
Data and information regarding Americans and mental fitness are not as obvious and precise as the information about our physical condition which has just been cited. We have some strong indicators, however, which mirror mental conditions. Addictions, for example, can be understood through research data, yet the dynamics of addiction are not fully known. According to the Journal of Substance Abuse, approximately 40 million Americans have personal problems with the consumption of alcohol. About 14 million of them are alcohol abusers. Such abuses figure in about half of homicides and a third of suicides, not to mention that approximately half of auto fatalities involve alcohol. Smoking is another example which is being altered radically through research information and deleterious effects on health. All of us are addicted to something(s). Therefore it is important for all of us to learn about addictions for our personal fitness.
According to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill approximately 51 million Americans suffer from some form of mental disorder. About 17 million Americans endure some type of depression, and about 2 million live with some form of schizophrenia. Even with the obvious mental and behavioral problems in our society, our investment in mental health fell 54 percent in the decade 1988-98. Besides this, we have our attitudes, anxiety disorders, abuse and violence, learning disabilities and other social issues which contribute to mental stresses and social dysfunctions. The negative statistics and disarray seen in the physical data listed above carry over into poor mental fitness data.
Spiritual sickness and fitness data is even less precise but may be reflected in the above data, as well as in public opinion polls, crime statistics, family statistics, church attendance, and popularity of non-traditional forms of religion and practice. It is clear that spiritual sickness and fitness are more mysterious and hard to define than mental and physical conditions.
The consequences of our unhealthy habits and attitudes are now costing us more than we can afford, with future projections looking worse. A quiet desperation seems to haunt our economic prosperity, for we sense that healthy morality and fitness are more important than prosperity and pleasure. But how do we stop the world and get off?
A GOSPEL OF FITNESS
Enter the Gospel of Fitness. This is not a replacement for the traditional Gospel of the Newer Testament. Nor is it yet a formal theology. It has elements of both, however, for it is “good news” in a health-challenged society. And its rationale is based upon responsible disciplines of body-mind-spirit, respect for each other, and ecological stewardship.
The Gospel of Fitness calls for the development of a counterculture again, in which courageous and thoughtful people break the pattern of escalating self-indulgence, and live an equally contagious lifestyle of accountability to each other and joyful stewardship. For health is as contagious as sickness.
This Gospel of Fitness is not a reversion to musty cliches and self-righteous resolutions. Rather, it is contemporary, logical, and satisfying. It is based upon a fresh understanding of John 10:10 where Jesus promises us “life abundant.” This is not a promise of bigger, faster, tastier, and prettier. For we all realize that the teachings of Jesus pointed us toward God’s purposes, not toward consumerism. This gospel urges us to see the consequences of the social sicknesses we have come to regard as normal. And it offers the deep satisfactions of being the best that we can be, rather than the richest, cleverest, most glamorous of all. Such satisfactions must be learned and savored, for they are not derived from doing what comes naturally.
Fitness of body-mind-spirit is not a miracle cure for everything that ails us, the church, and society. Nor does it guarentee happiness, life without disabilities or world peace. The point of total fitness is that it becomes a way of life which helps free us from consumerism, obsessive lifestyles, and moral malaise. When we are fit we are freer to handle problems and opportunities appropriately. Body-mind-spirit fitness is its own reward. We feel better ... look better ... work better ... play better ... relate better. And, fitness costs much less than indulgence.
A Fitness Quest is emerging in our society, which is a function of the Gospel of Fitness. It is not yet a full-blown system, but in its shadowy outline we can discern its drivers. Our Fitness Quest is driven by consequences, good science, shared experiences of healing, health and fitness, profound spirituality, and by politics, of course.
The consequences of human behavior which help drive the Fitness Quest indicate that we have made a sea change in human ethics in recent years. Where once we tried to make our choices on the basis of what we believed, now we nearly always choose which consequences we want to live with. This means that when negative consequences become too painful or costly, we begin to change. And we look for more positive consequences. Our Fitness Quest is a search for better consequences then instant gratification, quick fixes, and comfortable sicknesses. The Gospel of Fitness offers positive consequences.
Good science is another driver of our Fitness Quest. It is giving us information and data about the realities of being human, such as what is happening to our bodies, relationships, and ecology. Good science is now based upon Quantum Physics instead of Newtonian Physics. The old science implied dualisms, static conditions, and it came to justify our dysfunctional normalcies. New science emphasizes the interdependence and interrelationships (systems) of everyone and everything. It is teaching us new perspectives on energy—the life force which drives everything. And it is helping to teach us the great spiritual lesson that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It revels in imaginative creativity rather than isolated studies of static objects. The Gospel of Fitness enjoys this.
The Fitness Quest is also driven by shared experiences. There are no unshared experiences anymore, though some may be private. We not only share each other’s consequences, we share the synergy of healthy relationships. The Gospel of Fitness loves healthy relationships. Our Fitness Quest is moved by the momentum of spirituality—that eternal energy which we believe emanates from God. This not Gnosticism, but rather an intuitive and yet palpable sensing that there is much more to human life than we have yet discovered. The Imago Dei, God’s trademark on us, can literally empower us to fulfill God’s purposes, rather than settle for consumerism. A Fitness Quest is also driven by politics. We are now so suspicious of politics that we may forget that politics is the art of the possible, according to Harry Truman. Politics can be a respectful negotiation and cooperation which makes it possible to live healthfully with the shared consequences of each other's behavior. The Gospel of Fitness thrives in the synergy of caring politics.
WHAT IS THE GOSPEL OF FITNESS
It is not easy to define the emerging Gospel of Fitness. But for now we may say that it is the lived experience of God’s purposes for creation. Each of us is unique, has dissimilar as well as shared beliefs, and must live with the consequences of what we believe as well as what we do. Therefore each should bring our finest theology and highest wisdom to shared understandings of what this emerging gospel is all about. The point of trying to define this gospel here is not precision as much as understanding. This is not about who is right and who is wrong. That old dualism must be laid aside in our common Fitness Quest. Perhaps our quest for the Gospel of Fitness can be developed around some principles which allow us to combine the insights of theology, science, and politics into a creative milieu we can all build on.
Principle One: Fitness, by definition, now means healthy stewardship of self, resources, and ecology in order to fulfill God’s purposes for creation. Therefore, being the best that we can be is not a striving for mastery, perfection nor control. It is openness to God’s purposes for all. The majesty and enormity of this principle is likely to keep us humble and expectant.
Principle Two: Fitness is union of body-mind-spirit in the spiritual experience of God’s purposes. Further, this union is part of the complete interrelationship of all creation. Our most immediate experience is the experience of our bodies, which is the physical expression of personhood. Therefore our bodies become a metaphor and testing ground for our Fitness Quest. However, our mind and our spirit are aspects of personhood which have distinguishing characteristics. Our mind is the conscious-preconscious aspect of personhood which enables cognition and imagination. Our spirit is the personal experience of union-communion with that which is greater than ourselves. These aspects are interactive such that they enhance or weaken each other.
Principle Three: Fitness is the learned and practiced disciplines of wellness, rather than doing what comes naturally. Though God has built healing and growth potentials into each of us and all of creation, we must learn the difference between gratification and comfort versus satisfaction and stewardship. Life is a continuous choosing between these possibilities. When choices are consistent, either positive or negative, they become habits. When habits foster unfitness, they must be changed. This requires the discipline of choosing and acting till the new behavior becomes habit. Discipline is a powerful resource for fitness. Discipline, as used here, is not deprivation and discomfort. Rather, it is a celebration of life in its highest forms by consistently choosing the thoughts, behaviors, and relationships which promote fitness.
Principle Four: Since our choices and disciplines can be mistaken and even sinful (sin here means violation of God’s purposes), fitness must subsume a process of healing (includes confession-forgiveness), and prevention. All of us need to be healed from something, and for something ... often. We are most aware of the healing in the body. Yet the healing of mind and spirit are equally important. The healing of the body is again a metaphor and testing ground for learning about the possibilities of healing. The goal of healing goes beyond lessening of pain and recovery of a former state. It is a conscious blending with God’s purposes in order to recover and function as God intended. Nurturing ourselves healthfully facilitates the natural potential for healing. All organisms and systems need healing and nurture, for this promotes balance and harmony. Yet balance and harmony are not the only goals of healing. For sometimes a sick, unfit organism or system must be unbalanced intentionally in order to allow healing. The point of our Fitness Quest is the healing and nurture of all God’s creation.
Principle Five: Relationships, relationships, relationships ... three vital dynamics of fitness. We have already noted that the new quantum physics demonstrates the interrelationship of everyone and everything. The Gospel of Fitness emphasizes that fitness cannot happen in isolation. Not only are we already in relationship to everyone and everything in God’s creation, whether we want to be or not, we are accountable to choose, nurture, and enhance this relational quality of creation in every way possible. It is in our self-interest. And it keeps us oriented toward that which is greater than ourselves.
HOW TO BE FIT
We can be precise about the actual practice of body-mind-spirit fitness. For though contemporary fitness information is cluttered with commercialism, the basics of a fitness regimen are becoming clear. And part of the good news of the Gospel of Fitness is that everyone can be body- mind-spirit fit, even with our unique genes and situations, even when in a wheelchair or hospital bed. For body- mind-spirit fitness is not about diet fads, exercise gimmicks, marathons, or beauty. Rather, it is about being the best that we can be.
Following are the guidelines to body-mind-spirit fitness which emerge from a review of reputable researchers and specialists.
Guideline One: EAT SMART. Nutrition is the feeding of the body, in its most obvious form. But feeding the body is also a way of feeding the mind and spirit. Further, our minds and spirits need feeding as well as our bodies. There are ethnic and regional traditions regarding eating and food. Factors such as which foods, when, in what mixtures and preparations, and in what settings, make a difference in fitness nutrition. Enormous amounts of research data are now available regarding nutrition, but Americans are more accustomed to eating what they want to eat than what is good for them. A variety of nutrition gurus offer their versions, some of which are helpful. But a key to eating smart is learning from reliable sources what foods are nutritious without adding unnecessary ingredients, then learning to listen to our bodies for signals about what they need. The simplest lesson to be learned from all the nutritional data, however, is to eat less.
Guideline Two: EXERCISE MORE. Modern civilization long ago lost the patterns of natural physical activity which keeps muscles in tone and bodily systems functioning at healthful levels. Therefore, in the midst of sedentary, comfort-oriented lifestyles, we must add appropriate exercise and activity. A variety of fitness gurus are ready to sell us gadgets and diets, and some offer valuable fitness information. Again, the key is found in learning about our own bodies and what activities and rest they need to function well. This can mean simply building more physical activity into the day or week, as long as it includes getting the heart pumping about double its resting level several times a week. Appropriate leisure and rest are important corollaries to exercise and activities. For both exercise and rest help us manage the stresses of life. Developing individual and shared exercise-rest regimens can be exciting along with helping us feel healthier. We need not become remarkable physical specimens, yet there are warnings and consequences when we do not exercise. C. Everett Koop, M.D., former Surgeon General of the United States summarizes the need for good nutrition and exercise with these words: “If you eat too much, and exercise too little, you will gain weight. It’s as simple as that.” The simplest prescription is: be more active!
Our body-mind-spirit perspective requires us to give equal attention to exercise for the mind and spirit. Our brain, heart, and organs never stop working, of course, yet they do have ways to rest. For they simply shutdown if we ignore their needs. Many of us need healthful exercises for the mind beyond or different from normal tasks. Exploring a new idea, doing puzzles, playing mind games, learning stress reduction exercises, developing a new attitude, teaching yourself how to simplify your life, practicing creativity—all these help the mind to stay agile and growing. Our spirit needs exercise, too. Physical prayer is one way; developing physical and mental actions which act out our prayers, composing new prayers and liturgies, singing and dancing in the spirit, learning deep breathing and yoga/tai chi exercises, doing spiritual-imaginative explorations, walking the labyrinth, doing intercessory prayers—all these nurture and strengthen the spirit.
Guideline Three: DRINK WATER. Many people do not drink enough water, or, drink unhealthy fluids (with additives, preservatives, coloring, sweeteners) instead of water. Fluid is crucial for health and fitness, for the immune system, mucous membranes, and organs. Bodily fluid systems cannot function well without adequate fluid intake—eight glasses per day. Thirst is not an adequate indicator, for by the time thirst is noticed the body is already dehydrating. Drinking more water is one of the simplest ways to aid health and fitness.
Our minds and spirits need water also. Drinking more water enhances brain function and energy. Thinking of and planning for drinking more water is useful mental exercise, for it reminds us that our bodies are 98 percent water. The spiritual aspects of water, though obvious, are often neglected. We know about baptism, eucharistic wine (juice/water), ritual cleansings, foot washing, liturgical sprinkling, and application of water. Cleansing and healing applications of water and oils are recovering popularity. Water not only hydrates, it cleanses, softens, and blesses body, mind, and spirit.
Guideline Four: THINK FREE. This concise guideline has profound implications. For it encourages openness, freedom from habitual thinking and boundaries, development of new attitudes, exploration of imaginative possibilities, investing more love and energy in relationships, blending with the “higher thoughts and purposes of God” (Isaiah 55:9), learning the enormous benefits of expanded insight by taking time to think about how you are thinking about what you are thinking about, playfully imagining yourself on free flight around the universe. Our minds benefit from both work and recreation.
In the last several years (“The Decade of the Brain”) brain research has taken quantum leaps. But not only are we generating massive data about brain functions, we are learning the cognitive dynamics of the heart and bodily organs. The development of quantum physics is exploding our conceptions about cognition, memory, energy, consciousness, electromagnetic communications, as well as time-space relativity. For example, Paul Pearsall’s The Heart’s Code presents research, anecdote, and competent theorizing from heart transplant data which suggests that the heart is at least as involved in cognition as the brain. The HeartMath Institute in the silicon valley, the P.E.A.R. Institute at Princeton, and the University of Arizona’s Human Energy Systems Laboratory all show close communication and shared intelligence and body control between brain, heart, and organs. And the new quantum physics is demonstrating that energy is information that is non-local, meaning communication of information travels in energy quanta around this planet instantaneously. The implication for thought, consciousness, prayer, and spirituality are astonishing and provocative. Thinking free, as applied to fitness means overcoming artificial limitations and parochial thinking, and opening ourselves to expanded dynamics of consciousness.
Guideline Five: PRAY HIGH. The reference point for this metaphorical guideline is Isaiah 55:9 where God’s message reminds the prophet “My ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Much of theology and doctrine was developed in pre-quantum physics perspectives. Our concepts of creation, heaven, good and evil ... even God, are more anthropomorphic than we care to confess. From Schleiermacher, Bultmann, Teilhard de Chardin, Barth, and Tillich, through Cox, Hamilton, and Fox, to Whitehead, Barbour, Keck, and O’Murchu, et al., who are trying to boost us into quantum theology, we have little choice but to revise our perspectives on spirituality, so we may experience the freedom of truly letting God be God. We need the spiritual gift of discernment as a dynamic Global Positioning System (GPS) to keep us on track towards God. I find myself pondering Bible passages such as Exodus 3:14, Isaiah 6:1-9, John 1:1-18, Mark 9:2-7, then Romans 12:1-2 and Philippians 2:5-7 in expectancy that I may open myself to God and spirituality beyond possessing. And thereby allow my spirit, in its fitness quest, to be launched into that which is greater than myself.
There is no formal theology for the Gospel of Fitness. Yet there are principles and guidelines, such as those noted here, which can facilitate dialogue and sharing of our spiritual pilgrimages. As we break out into a new age of time-space, we may resemble the earliest disciples as they listened and watched in amazement as Jesus lived the first Gospel.
Copyright 2000, G. Lloyd Rediger. All rights reserved.
|
