Thursday, January 6, 2011

Dust Thou Art ….. But That’s Not All!

Biblical Beginnings
Do you know experts have said that anywhere from 75% to 90% of all disease in humans is caused by either diet or stress? This statement is easily verifiable by going on the Internet and entering a query into Google. These numbers lead me to believe that we can improve the health of our body by watching what we eat and being careful of what we think. In my previous post I stated that, in future posts, we would examine the connection between the body, mind and spirit. It seems to me that the body is as good a place as any to begin.

The book of Genesis states: “Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” (Gen. 2:7). My interpretation of this text is that God formed the body of man from inert material (i.e. the dust of the ground) and brought him to life with his breath. The above passage should lead us to believe that man is composed of material and nonmaterial parts.

Not until God blew the breath of life into man did man become alive. Therefore without the “breath of life”, the body is just inert material and as dumb as a door nail, i.e. “stuff”. It is unable to function purposefully without some type of guidance. The question becomes “who or what tells the body what to do and what does the health of the body have to do with biblical scripture”?

Health & Wellness
A restatement of the opening sentence of this post would be as follows: “We, as humans, are placing our bodies in a state of “dis-ease” by what we eat and think and how we allow our circumstances to affect us”. If this is true, then something is making our bodies place us in this predicament. I submit to you that that something is our mind.

Our mind is the thinking, reasoning part of ourselves that signals the body into action. We all know that cookies are good, but if we only ate cookies every day, after a while our bodies would become sick. As a result we try to balance what we feed our bodies with nutritious daily helpings from the different food groups. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure this out.

Additionally, my oldest son made an interesting statement on his Face book page a few weeks ago. He quoted Scipio Africanus (a Roman General) who said:”I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 96% how I react to it.” You see, my friend, much of the stress in our lives comes from how we respond to the circumstances in our lives. It is a well known fact that stress which continues unrelieved over a period of time has a devastating effect upon the health of the body.

As A Man Thinks in His Heart….
Proverbs 23:7 states: "As a man thinks in his heart, so he is."

Change your thoughts and you will change your world!

We will focus on the benefits of controlling/changing our thoughts in my next post.

Peace….Al

1 comment:

Alyssa said...

I was just thinking, yesterday, about how I need to ensure that I eat veggies and fruits EVERYday and possibly more organic items. thanks pops!