Recently, I have run into a lot of “Christian” exhortations on social media for people to lose weight and “get fit.” I use quotation marks around Christian, because, in some cases, they are simply outright mockery about physical appearance (but not all are so bad).
The reigning moralisms about healthy (“moderate”) food intake are unhelpful for either virtue or health. There is no intuitive difference between wanting to eat for whatever reason, and being “really” hungry. There is no internal signal that one has eaten “enough” and one should now abstain. There is no sensory guidance that one can use will power to follow or that one can ignore for the sake of culinary desire. God made food. We like to eat food. And, apart from some basic knowledge of biology and math, no one can intuit how much is too much. (Or rather “too much” [Proverbs 25:16] is already probably far more than is healthy on a regular basis. One could avoid that extreme and still not be “healthy” enough.)
Continue reading “Wisdom, “Fitness,” and Moralism”