Why Does Health Matter? A Biblical Perspective

God is intentional. He designed everything in this world with intention to operate in a certain way. As I read Genesis 1, I see how He didn’t just throw paint at a wall; He carefully took day after day to design different parts of creation, especially when it came time to creating humans. In Jeremiah 29, God reminds the Israelites that He has plans for them, that their future is not random, but in His hands entirely. Numerous Old Testament prophets received words from God about a coming Savior, and His only Son Jesus fulfilled each one of those prophecies hundreds of years later. The Bible is clear: God is intentional.

Specifically, when you look in depth at the human body, you can see how intentional He was in designing us, especially when He designed the process for maintaining good health. To be clear, “maintaining good health” means the actions that we must take in order to uphold normal functioning of the human body. 

He designed our bone strength to be a direct reflection of our activity level. According to Wolff’s Law, bones that are exposed to high levels of mechanical loading will become stronger in those specific areas, while bones that receive little or no loading will become weaker (PMID: 29763038). Muscles act in a very similar fashion: they must be exposed to some sort of a load (whether it’s just standing up from a chair or barbell squatting 1000 lb.) in order to stimulate muscle growth. Otherwise, muscle loss will ensue (https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmaa015). Body fat levels must also be kept in check because higher body fat percentage levels are correlated with (and, let's be honest, probably cause) an uncomfortably long list of negative health outcomes (https://doi.org/10.1038/oby.2011.36). 

So, in plainer English, if you choose to sit around and overeat junk all day, God designed the human body to waste away much more rapidly. On the flip side, regular exercise, calorie control, and other positive health habits tend to support overall health and longevity (PMID: 29712712).

That…might seem harsh…and possibly quite convicting…which is probably a good thing...

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My point is that God is extremely intentional, and He designed everything with a very distinct purpose. Naturally, as humans, we want to ask the follow-up question: Why? Why has God chosen to be so intentional with this?

Cue the entire book of Leviticus.

“You must keep my rules and my regulations; by doing them one will live; I am the LORD” (Leviticus 18:5 CEB). Throughout the book of Leviticus, God commands the Israelites to follow a long list of commands, and over 49 times He follows up the command with saying, “I am the LORD.” 

Not only here, but in other parts of scripture, God phrases it another way. Over 72 times in the Old Testament (58 of them being in Ezekiel), God says that He will act in some certain way, and then “you will know that I am the LORD.”

“I am God, and there is no other…Yes, I have spoken; so I will also bring it about. I have planned it; I will also do it” (selections from Isaiah 46:9, 11 CSB). And the list goes on. You get my point.

Circling back to Leviticus, 251 of the 613 commandments of the Old Testament Law are found in this book, and, on average, roughly every 5 commandments, God is reminding them why they are to act in such a way. Why and how to make sacrifices, what things they should and should not eat, how to handle those with illness, how to uphold proper relationships with each other…because I am the LORD.  

In other words, He is God, and we are not. He set it up this way, because He wanted it this way, and it's going to stay that way until He says otherwise. The clay doesn’t control the potter. 

You may think that’s a very cold-shouldered move. An abusive dictator action. No doubt the Israelites probably had those thoughts run through their minds from time to time. Do I REALLY have to do every single detail? Seems like cruel and unusual punishment to me. And for a time, I would have shared that perception. 

Until I remembered: since when has God not done anything out of love for us? Are we not His beloved? Does He grow a little impish grin watching us suffer to get up early for the gym, or eat plain chicken and rice for the fourth time this week? Even when He puts us in an undesirable and difficult situation, do we not ultimately end up seeing He did that for our good?

Parents, you know what I’m talking about. “Son, take out the trash.” “Ugh. Dad, WHY?!?” “Because, I said so.” In most cases, Dad is not telling Son to take out the trash because he gets a kick out of watching him struggle to lug an 80 pound trash can out to the curb. He does it because it teaches him responsibility, contributing to the family, doing things you don’t always want to do, and so forth.

Is the same not true of the conversation at hand? Except, in this context, it’s a perfectly pure and holy environment, because it's God who’s calling the shots here. 

God’s no bully. He doesn’t lay down His ordinances to abuse power. He lays down His ordinances to draw us closer to Him.

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So why did God design our bodies this way? Why do we need to move, eat nutritious foods, and get good sleep to maintain proper functioning of our bodies?

Like I said, He’s no bully. He sets the standard for our good. Let’s see why that is…

(*Each of these points deserves its own book to fully unpack everything. Enjoy the shortened form here.)

• Ability: God wants us to be more able to follow Jesus and spread the Gospel.

Our ability and our readiness to do the work of following Jesus and spreading the Gospel can be increased massively with the regular work of taking care of our health. Simply moving more, lifting some weights, eating a little better, and sleeping enough go an extremely long way. We can gain the capacity to do things and lift things, the stamina to go long days, the mobility to reach our children, and so much more. 

Not only our physical ability, but also our financial ability is of concern too. Better health, while maybe costing a little more up front to maintain it, will eventually cost less in the long term, which frees up much more financial flexibility for service to the Kingdom. Though slightly outdated, a 1999 paper by Pronk and colleagues (PMID: 10605975) found that never-smokers who exercised 3 times per week and maintained a normal BMI had mean annual health care charges that were 49% lower than physically inactive, overweight smokers. More recent studies around this topic are hard to find to gain a more concrete picture of this cost disparity, but just take a moment to think of the magnitude of modern day American healthcare and hospital bills. Suddenly, spending a couple more bucks per month doesn’t seem so bad.

• Self Control: God wants us to be better equipped to overcome temptation.

  
  

Our ability for self control does not increase by trying harder (Miles et al., 2016; Veling et al., 2017, to name a few). Galatians 5 points out that self control is a Fruit of the Spirit, which means that it is a quality we do not naturally possess. It’s a quality that only becomes evident when the Holy Spirit starts working in our hearts, to root out our temptations to selfishly serve ourselves and begin outpouring for a greater good. Therefore, our ability for self control only increases by becoming more in sync with the Holy Spirit.

So, how do we become more in sync with the Holy Spirit? The more you spend time with God, the easier it will become to hear His voice speaking to us through the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we should seize EVERY OPPORTUNITY we can to sync up with Him more (2 Corinthians 10:5). If we sleep 8 hours, cook and eat 3 meals, and work out for an hour a day, we’ve now spent half of our 24 hours doing just normal everyday health tasks. We’d be severely limiting our opportunities to draw closer to Him if we just cut Him out of it. 

After all, Paul teaches us in 1 Corinthians 10:31 that, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” The more situations we can approach as doing them “to the glory of God,” we will start to hear His voice louder and louder. The result? The temptation to serve ourselves dissipates to a low murmur.

• Comfortably Uncomfortable: God wants us to choose the hard things in life so that we can learn to rely on Him more.

The Gospel message is counter-cultural. It swims upstream. It creates disruption. It ruffles feathers. It makes us uncomfortable.

The “flow of the current” in our culture right now is comfort. Our culture is falling into what Paul warns us about in Philippians 3. He says that the mark of those who are enemies of the Gospel are those that make “their god as their belly” (vs. 19). In other words, obsessed with doing whatever feels good. 

Comfort can be a good thing, but if we find comfort in the wrong places, it's no longer a good thing. Our society places emphasis on finding comfort within yourself, your desires, your feelings. The result? We obey whatever our hearts tell us, because we trust that our heart is leading us down the right path to comfort. Our god is our belly. We don’t need God anymore.

Acting this way is by far the biggest threat to our faith. We must push ourselves to be uncomfortable, if not quite often, at least from time to time. We have to choose the hard things in life more often because it teaches us to actually act on our faith. Instead of us dictating our own steps, we have to depend on God more to illuminate our path, give us the strength, and trust that He’s taking us down the right path at all.

Again, as I said earlier, He’s no bully, and He’s not manipulative. He’s doing this out of love to draw us closer to Him. He’s saying, “To what lengths are you willing to follow me?”

This does not call for a complete abandonment of every tasty food or never having a TV binge night ever again. This does, however, call for having complete control over allowing those things to be in your life. Knowing that too much is detrimental, and having the ability to overcome the temptation to partake in too much.

Therefore, we better get comfortable being uncomfortable. Comfortable “denying ourselves.” Comfortable doing the hard things in life. Comfortable saying no to the gratifications of the flesh, so we may gain a greater reward.

We don’t always want to go out and be active. We don’t always want to eat healthy. We don’t always want to go to bed on time. But we must know we can’t trust our own feelings, and we shouldn’t trust what our brains think will bring us the most joy.

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As I close, I would be remiss to not offer you guidance on some real steps you can begin practicing right away to begin developing your faith through physical care. So here goes…

1. Move often, find physical activities you enjoy and participate in them regularly, and lift some weights

2. Eat foods that nourish your body, limit highly tasty foods, and try not to overeat on a regular basis 

3. Try to sleep well and don't hesitate to rest

4. Don’t smoke

5. Don’t drink excessive amounts of alcohol

6. If any health conditions or injuries arise, take care of them seriously

If you do these things consistently over a long period of time, you will be more than pleased by the results. 

You may have 99 problems, but your health being a liability won’t be one of em.

Remember, taking care of our health matters. A lot. God wants to use us for many long and enriching years of service to the Kingdom. And along the way, we find more ways to strengthen our relationship with Him.