The real reason churches don't talk about health

Many of us would love to see churches start promoting health better. We hear the endless prayer requests for heartbreaking health problems. We see the obese pastors preaching about self-control. We have to decide if it’s worth it to compromise the quality of food our kids eat just so they can attend children’s church or VBS.

And we know that God’s Word has power to speak to all areas of our lives, that health and nutrition are not spiritually neutral topics, and that if Christians have the truth of God’s Word, then how we approach health and the results we get should not be indistinguishable from the rest of the world.

The problem isn’t that pastors are unwilling to address hard topics or that they don’t have enough information about health, although that can be part of it. Nutrition will never be included in sermons and the donuts in the fellowship hall will not go until this happens first:

Christians must recognize that eating healthy and enjoying foods are not at odds.

Christians recognize that food attracts people to church and that it's central to hospitality, fellowship, and celebrations—as we should. The Bible talks about food positively in all of these contexts.

What kids want to go to VBS if the only snacks are rice cakes and carrot sticks? Who will show up to the men's breakfast if it’s kale smoothies? It’s not the same inviting a new family at church over for dinner if all you serve is a fat-free salad. There is something lost from celebrating Christmas if we eliminate Christmas dinner, Christmas cookies, and Christmas morning cinnamon rolls (yes, of course, Christmas is about Jesus, not food, but there’s a reason all of the old covenant holidays were feasts).

But this is the picture of health culture has promoted and too many Christians have bought into it.

As long as the choice is between health and all the other good things the Bible commands, health loses—rightly so. We may hear some attempts at promoting a “balance” between these goals, but prioritizing health will never get very far when it has such a competitor.

The thing is that it was never supposed to be a duality.

This ascetic approach to health is central to nearly all schools of thought about food—whether the demon is fat, carbs, protein, salt, or calories in general, some food we have a fundamental craving for is the problem and we need to resist it.

But it's not biblical and we need to aggressively uproot it from our worldview. God made our appetites for a reason—to lead us to the fats, carbs, protein, salt, and calories we need. So satisfying those cravings can be deeply enjoyable and nourishing.

So churches should recognize that they can promote health without making fellowship meals lame, or attracting less members to the prayer breakfast, or getting rid of treats in the fellowship hall after service. And I'm not talking about replacing the after-church donuts with almond flour applesauce-sweetened muffins. ("You can't tell the difference- I promise!" Yeah right.)

I'm talking about church members making homemade donuts with real, quality ingredients, connecting with and enjoying their food, and expressing love in a way you never could with pre-made baked goods from the grocery store.

Because what really makes food healthy isn’t cutting out whole food groups or macronutrients, it’s procuring food with respect for the natural order of God’s creation and exercising glorifying, rather than destructive, dominion over it. I elaborate on this concept and the details of how it applies to different food groups much more in my book.