Fitness Idolatry

“so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman,”

‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭4:16‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Fitness can be a slippery slope as a Christian.  Should we be healthy, fit, strong?  I would say it is definitely beneficial and right to be attentive to our health.  It's another thing to idolize it.  Spend some time reading through the Old Testament and you will get an idea about God's thoughts and feelings about us worshiping idols (yes, you can make yourself or your health an idol).  But let's take a look at what happens in an unhealthy lifestyle.  

Let's start at our diet.  On the ground floor of health, our diet works from the inside out.  If that sounds familiar, it is how God's Spirit works in us, it changes us on the inside, and as we let Him work on us we see the manifestation of the Spirit in our actions.  Diet does the same thing, if we eat crap, we feel like crap.  Our body begins to show physical symptoms of the unhealthy diet in us and our actions start to manifest that diet as well.  We become sluggish, lazy, and even become unable to do certain things.  So what about the fitness side of the coin.  Well, laziness as a result of poor diet can restrict, if not even deny us, avenues of fitness, whether it be sport, weight training, yoga, etc.  

So we choose to pursue a healthy diet and opt to take action and step into the gym.  Now we see the fruits our what a good diet and coinciding action produce.  We find ourselves feeling better both physically and mentally, and capable of doing things we might not of before.  It's noteworthy for parents too, as an unhealthy lifestyle like anything, can be passed on to our children whether we want it to or not.

So now we find ourself at a healthy place in life, but what about the idol concept?  In our pursuit of or at the end, when we choose to maintain our goals, we can fall in to a trapping where we focus so much on our health that we lose sight of things of more importance.  First and foremost, God Himself.  Do you spend more time at the temple of body worship (the gym) than you do in prayer, reading the Bible and going to church?  What about our families, the people we wanted to get healthy for?  Do we spend so much time exercising and putting our focus into fitness that we missed our kids baseball game or haven't gone out on a date with our wife or husband?  Dont't lose sight of the important things in life by putting fitness in the highest place.

Grunting, Praying and Worshiping

When I’m at the gym, there are definitely times that get me grunting, sometimes quite loudly.  I always thought it was funny when I would see someone go through his or her whole workout and never make a peep.  Now I’m not judging on this, but it got me thinking today about working out in the physical and faith sense.

When working out, it’s important to push yourself.  Whether you’re a male or female, don’t be ashamed to make some noise due to your effort.  It’s not like you should be trying to announce it to everyone else, but it sure is a sign that you are pushing yourself; and that’s a good thing.  When we try to get stronger, lose weight, pack on muscle, etc, it requires a lot of effort.  Just being in the gym or watching work out videos doesn’t do it for your.  I’m sure a lot of us have heard that before, but let’s take it a step further; just going through the motions doesn’t always get you to your goals.  For sure, lifting some weights or doing some cardio is good (even at a minimum level), but it doesn’t really get you to your goals.  It’s better than doing nothing, but you have to ask yourself, what are you even there for? 

Before we dive into the faith side of this, I’ll briefly use the example of the “kiai” from martial arts that we are probably all familiar with.  There are several traditional reasons you may find for its function, but I’ll focus on two primary points.  The first has to do with energy.  There’s a lot from the eastern beliefs that this dips in to, but lets focus on the raw energy in this sense.  I’ve gone through several martial arts before, and I can attest from experience, when you shout (or perform some “kiai”) during a punch, kick, etc, that move is guaranteed to have more force and power behind it, more energy.  This applies to the grunt/yell at the gym (but let’s not get obnoxious with it).   Just watch good old Arnie from his training days.  The other reason for the “kiai” is declaration of your fighting spirit.  Why do you think man has always had war cries going in to battle?  It intimidates the opponent and reassures, rallies and otherwise bolsters the shouter.

So where does our faith come in to grunting and shouting?  Well, probably the most overt example of this comes from the fall of Jericho.  Joshua 6:20 (NIV) – “When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a shout, the wall collapse; so everyone charged in, and they took the city.”  That was a shout that had the power of God behind it and the goal (Jericho) was attained.  Now we aren’t told to go around shouting at things; you’d honestly look real odd, real fast.  But there is a sound we make as Christian’s.  It’s our cry out to God in prayer and our praises that we sing in worship.  Prayer is an essential part of being Christian.  It’s an opportunity in which we can choose to speak into our faith, to go before our Father and thank Him for all that He has done and to ask Him for what we need, for His comfort, for wisdom, guidance, etc.  We can go through the motions of just attending Sunday service, but just like the gym, how much does that really accomplish.  Make a sound, speak to God, have the relationship with Him that He is openly offering to you. 

Worship, sing praises to our Father and Creator of everything.  The story of when David was chastised by Michal for his singing and dancing is one of my favorites.  David’s response to her in 2 Samuel 6:21 speaks volumes (no pun intended) to the shout of praise we should be giving our Lord: David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when He appointed me ruler of the Lord’s people Israel – I will celebrate before the Lord.”  We are chosen by God, no one else chose us, He did, it’s time to celebrate before Him and give thanks for all that He has done.  It’s time to make a noise.

Jesus explained prayer in Matthew chapter six, it entails the outline of the Lord’s Prayer that we are all familiar with.  There is a small point there that I wanted to bring out.  In verse 5 He says “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corner to be seen by men.”  Nothing we do sure ever be done for show or to look good or appear a certain way; prayer and worship more than anything.  The same goes for the gym, don’t make noise to make it or to appear to be working, let it come naturally as you press in to your exercise.  Prayer and worship come naturally when you press in to your faith.  When you do, the desire to sing praises and speak to your Father will overwhelm you, don’t be afraid to just let it out.