Lose Yourself
[Prepare yourself for some passion. Were I speaking this to an audience I’d be shouting in parts, ala my two favorite living preachers- Pastors Mark Driscoll and Matt Chandler. I go a bit long, but go with me. My heart is fully out there on this one.
Passion, I tell you.]
I love The Biggest Loser. I really do.
It’s a heartbreaking thing to see people’s idolatry manifest on their bodies. The transformation from sick, obese, and dying, to healthy and strong is powerful stuff. I am so inspired when I see people go home and get healthy. There’s nothing quite like seeing a no-longer-obese parent go home and initiate changes that result in a totally new life trajectory for their obese children. Each week I get so excited when people have huge victories- [spoiler alert!] I literally clapped and cheered when Rudy broke the record of fastest to lose 100 pounds tonight! I was on the edge of my seat- literally- gripping the arms and asking Jesus to have given him that sweet moment. Overall, the transformation of seeing a person go home and lose dozens more pounds, glowing as a result of their new lifestyle… it gets me every time. I just can’t help but rejoice for them, for their getting to know God’s grace in that way. It’s awesome. AWESOME.
However, every time I watch I feel a sadness in my heart. The thrust of the show isn’t just about physical health- it’s about the contestants facing their issues of why they became morbidly obese, which seems like a really good idea. I want to celebrate when people choose to be different, but I just can’t. Not fully.
The contestants are being taught a lie. The lie is that they are fat because they didn’t love themselves enough to make good, healthy choices. The truth (small “t” intentional), then, is that now they have to face those stumbling blocks, recognize them, and now choose to overcome them. To further the lie, contestants are taught to put themselves first, everyone else second, to choose to make the right choices regarding diet and exercise. They are told more lies, that this self-first focus is the only way to truly be a healthy person toward everyone else around them.
The heart of the lie is that the contestants can become strong enough to save themselves. In tonight’s episode, in fact, a woman whose mother was a heroin addict (she eventually died as a result of her addiction) was forced to face her guilt that she couldn’t save her mother, and finally accept the fact that she could never make her mother love her and that chance died with her mother. The crux was that this guilt led her to 476 pounds and she was killing herself, so now she had to choose to be different, to choose to finally love herself and get healthy. The woman’s trainer, Jillian, literally said, “You can’t save her, but you can save yourself.”
LIE! It sounds all nice and pretty, but it is a LIE straight from the PIT OF HELL, from Satan himself, whose desire is for every human’s complete and utter destruction! Don’t believe me? Proverbs repeats this verse, to make it clear:
There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.
What is death? Eternal separation from God. Hell. Who wants people to go to hell and inspires and encourages man to trust his own instincts, to rely on himself as God? Satan, seeking to devour, rightfully called the enemy.
This is what kills me about the show- these people CAN NOT SAVE THEMSELVES. I see this same lie in blog after blog, weight loss book after weight loss book- that being healthy saves you. Choosing to healthy habits over a life of obesity is not salvation. Unless the catalyst is Jesus and a person is eating well and exercising as an act of obedience to God the Father in worship of Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, then they are no better off. Will they live longer? Likely, yes. Will they feel more fulfilled? There’s a chance that all of the attention for their weight loss, and/or their pride in their feelings of accomplishment, will seem to them to be a better life. But will that ache in their heart to know what it is to be really and truly loved, to pour themselves out in worship of a big-G God who loved them first and doesn’t just take from them ever be filled? No.
They- and all people who lose weight for any reason other than worshiping Jesus- will spend their whole lives always yearning for something more.
Jesus alone satisfies.
Jesus alone heals the broken girl who hid in a hotel closet while her mom whored her body to a slimeball man for drug money.
Jesus alone tells the “fat girl” that He loves her so much that He died for her, and that she is beautifully and wonderfully made and that He doesn’t require a supermodel physique and “augmentation” in order to consider her worthy of His time, attention, loving words, and affection.
Jesus alone tells the workaholic man who gained hundreds of pounds eating crap food because he was never home for real meals that he is forgiven, and that God can restore the years with his wife and children that the locusts have eaten.
Jesus alone makes it clear that the goal is not a dress size or number of pounds lost, but a heart living out an active faith in worship of a Holy and generous God. Not only that, but self-first focus is full on sin; Jesus-first focus can include not only physical health but the only authentic way to love others- with the love that Jesus Himself has for them. This far exceeds any “love” we can try to find in ourselves to give others; in fact, our attempts to love others apart from Jesus is as loving and generous as continually gifting them with used tampons, because that’s what our attempts toward any sort of good thing apart from Christ are to God. The answer isn’t getting physically healthy in order to be emotionally healthy.
The answer is Jesus. Jesus then deals with everything unhealthy- all of the sin and ugliness, not just what people can see, but all of it. He creates a new heart, one that is no longer ruled by the darkness of the old heart. The person doesn’t choose to be different- Jesus, through the Holy Spirit and by the will of the Father, completely changes them.
For me, I love the way weight is dropping off my body- I really do. What a tangible expression of God’s grace toward me, manifest in physical change. However rapid as my weight loss has been, though, it cannot keep up with the internal change. I want Jesus more than I want food. I want Jesus more than I want comfort, escape, control, all of it. I still sin, but I’m not the same person I was when I weighed 376 pounds and yet it has nothing to do with my current physical appearance.
I continue to maintain that if I reach a point where obesity is no longer a part of my life, and even if God miraculously heals me and I no longer struggle with the idols of comfort, control, pleasure and escape with regards to my health, but my worship is based on anything other than Jesus Christ then I would have been better off had God allowed me to reap the consequences of my sin and die a painful and early death. Real life, the kind that oozes out of me and overflows into everyone around me, is a life lived in worship of Jesus.
I pray that all involved with The Biggest Loser, the weight loss bloggers and authors, and everyone else believing lies about their identity being in their health, realizes this before it’s too late and their eternity has already come upon them. A biggest loser doesn’t save her own life, and the real biggest losers aren’t quantified by pounds lost. Jesus said that whoever seeks to save herself will lose her life, meaning instead of eternal life with God in Heaven she’ll suffer the eternal torment of painful death in the fiery lake of Hell; whoever loses her life, the biggest thing any of us can lose, for Jesus and lives for Him and not herself (Jesus-first focus instead of self-first focus) will find Life, and life more abundantly.
Amen and amen.
I’m sure I can clarify things after this passion fest, so feel free to ask questions, comment, whatever!
