Randy,
Our friend and sculptor Scott Stearman was once commissioned to craft a piece depicting the 10 Commandments. Instead of a mere sculpture of a tablet with words as I would have conceived, he created a masterful, multidimensional showcase of the history and gravity of the 10 Commandments that a lawyer later cited as the best case for the 10 Commandment he’d ever encountered.
If I had any critique of your Biblical Functional Medicine essay it would only be my
feeling that you so graciously and eloquently shared a message that should be delivered and hit like an atomic bomb. Under the guise of BFM you have ultimately uncovered, through a commentary on “health & wellness,” the church’s dire lack of attention to tending to the core of people’s lives and souls. And it further steers my thinking that more important than our spirituality, at least sequentially, is the need for our physical body to be as well tuned as possible.
What good is the “good news” to someone who is starving and simply needs a piece of
bread to keep them from death? Likewise, if our bodies, which house and feed our minds, are in jeopardy, it calls into question our very ability to conceive of and accept spiritual opportunity and direction. As you have been questioning for many years…
A recent meme states, “God is in control, but He doesn’t expect you to lean on a shovel
and pray for a hole.” You mention health & wellness along with relationships and finances as key areas the church spends time praying and tending to. Yet as you’ve cited for so long, most churches are quick to offer counseling for relational issues and Financial Peace classes for finances. But when it comes to sister Mary’s chronic back aches or brother Tom’s ulcers we pray, then send them out into the foyer for hot chocolate and donuts or a grease and sugar laden potluck.
When you cite all the maladies and pathologies of our times that are just as prevalent in
the church, if not more in some cases…such as health and wellness, it calls me to again
consider, what are we selling? Simply a hoped for salvation after our physical death – a death we are rapidly feeding and fostering just like the rest of the culture. As you wrote, “…but we misguidedly and blindly keep doing that which is fueling the pain.”
I feel you pulling us to consider the biblical mandate and responsibility to have our eyes
truly opened. To see as Jesus did. To be in the world and not of it. But if we are eating, sleeping, moving, and stressing just as everyone else is, where is the benefit? I’m again thinking, what would Jesus do? How would he live, today? Would he be out helping people or waiting in the doctor’s office or the long line in the pharmacy? Would he be applying for Medicaid?
In speaking to “traditional medicine” my concern is now raised in regards to “traditional
church and evangelism.” Traditional medicine, as you point out, is there for us once something breaks. It gives little to no attention to the prevention of breakage, and as you so profoundly point out, “The irony is that the health-care system will tend to be more successful as the patient develops a higher degree of un-health.” Has the church done the same thing? How great to cite the saving of the soul of a sinner at the brink of mortal death! But is there enough glory from keeping someone from ever reaching that brink?
You are ever so gracious with the concept of judgement, which people seem to where on their shirtsleeve regarding their health and personal responsibility. But again, is it judgmental to offer counseling for a church members continued relational problems? Or is it love? Is it judgmental to advise someone to attend a financial class as they suffer continual pain regarding matters of money? Or is it love?
Are the tenants of Biblical Functional Medicine judging someone’s lifestyle choices, or is it an ultimate act of love? A love that is radically missing from the church?!
And yet I feel you have spoken to a far greater and deeper issue, as I began by depicting. Is the church really structured, as I write in November of 2023, as a place that people come to, to be made whole and well and able in body, mind, and spirit? In your message on “Input” you brought me back to our world’s, humanity’s, and I fear the church’s propensity to focus on the external and miss the internal.
I fall to this to. Giving great focus to what I eat and don’t eat, how I exercise, what input I’m allowing into all my senses, and how I sleep. And fail to look inward to the core of my being. As you said, the who and how of me. Our world has never contained more access to so much information to help us. And meanwhile we have the inner programming on repeat that overrides anything and everything we could help ourselves with.
Thus with this message of Biblical Functional Medicine I’m brought to questioning if the church itself, is functional, and is providing guidance and counsel for more than just informed people, but highly functioning people. Is the next series on Daniel relevant for the congregants sitting in the pews who have little capacity to let anything in and take root due to their internal feelings of fear and inadequacy? Where do we meet them head on in their lives?
This reality struck me a decade ago as I saw congregants from my own church, sitting in the pews as messages wafted over their heads, only to visit you in your practice where they uncovered what was actually going on in their lives, and you then tended to what truly matters. Their true…life. To which gives question as to whether they are better served sitting in a church pew, or being a patient of functional medicine, and even more…Biblical Functional Medicine.
A Note Of Confirmation
In 2022 I invited Dr Thema Bryant onto my podcast. She was then President Elect of the APA…American Psychological Association. Her position was given extra attention in that she was female and black. But she was on my show due to my interest in her personal mission to bring spirituality into psychology. In her words and my subsequent paraphrasing, she realized a majority of the bedrock of humanity was built on a spiritual foundation. To leave spirituality out of psychology was leaving out a main tenant of humanity’s core existence, and in her opinion, negligent. I would say the same for medicine. Not only does it strike me as a responsibility to bring faith into medicine, but might it be the very thing medicine is lacking in order to truly meet people in providing true health and wellness?
I so value your wisdom and heart to serve, Randy. It’s an honor to call you friend.
Kevin Miller is an author and host of Self Helpful podcast.
Randy,
Our friend and sculptor Scott Stearman was once commissioned to craft a piece depicting the 10 Commandments. Instead of a mere sculpture of a tablet with words as I would have conceived, he created a masterful, multidimensional showcase of the history and gravity of the 10 Commandments that a lawyer later cited as the best case for the 10 Commandment he’d ever encountered.
If I had any critique of your Biblical Functional Medicine essay it would only be my
feeling that you so graciously and eloquently shared a message that should be delivered and hit like an atomic bomb. Under the guise of BFM you have ultimately uncovered, through a commentary on “health & wellness,” the church’s dire lack of attention to tending to the core of people’s lives and souls. And it further steers my thinking that more important than our spirituality, at least sequentially, is the need for our physical body to be as well tuned as possible.
What good is the “good news” to someone who is starving and simply needs a piece of
bread to keep them from death? Likewise, if our bodies, which house and feed our minds, are in jeopardy, it calls into question our very ability to conceive of and accept spiritual opportunity and direction. As you have been questioning for many years…
A recent meme states, “God is in control, but He doesn't expect you to lean on a shovel
and pray for a hole.” You mention health & wellness along with relationships and finances as key areas the church spends time praying and tending to. Yet as you’ve cited for so long, most churches are quick to offer counseling for relational issues and Financial Peace classes for finances. But when it comes to sister Mary’s chronic back aches or brother Tom’s ulcers we pray, then send them out into the foyer for hot chocolate and donuts or a grease and sugar laden potluck.
When you cite all the maladies and pathologies of our times that are just as prevalent in
the church, if not more in some cases…such as health and wellness, it calls me to again
consider, what are we selling? Simply a hoped for salvation after our physical death – a death we are rapidly feeding and fostering just like the rest of the culture. As you wrote, "…but we misguidedly and blindly keep doing that which is fueling the pain."
I feel you pulling us to consider the biblical mandate and responsibility to have our eyes
truly opened. To see as Jesus did. To be in the world and not of it. But if we are eating, sleeping, moving, and stressing just as everyone else is, where is the benefit? I’m again thinking, what would Jesus do? How would he live, today? Would he be out helping people or waiting in the doctor’s office or the long line in the pharmacy? Would he be applying for Medicaid?
In speaking to “traditional medicine” my concern is now raised in regards to “traditional
church and evangelism.” Traditional medicine, as you point out, is there for us once something breaks. It gives little to no attention to the prevention of breakage, and as you so profoundly point out, “The irony is that the health-care system will tend to be more successful as the patient develops a higher degree of un-health.” Has the church done the same thing? How great to cite the saving of the soul of a sinner at the brink of mortal death! But is there enough glory from keeping someone from ever reaching that brink?
You are ever so gracious with the concept of judgement, which people seem to where on their shirtsleeve regarding their health and personal responsibility. But again, is it judgmental to offer counseling for a church members continued relational problems? Or is it love? Is it judgmental to advise someone to attend a financial class as they suffer continual pain regarding matters of money? Or is it love?
Are the tenants of Biblical Functional Medicine judging someone’s lifestyle choices, or is it an ultimate act of love? A love that is radically missing from the church?!
And yet I feel you have spoken to a far greater and deeper issue, as I began by depicting. Is the church really structured, as I write in November of 2023, as a place that people come to, to be made whole and well and able in body, mind, and spirit? In your message on “Input” you brought me back to our world’s, humanity’s, and I fear the church’s propensity to focus on the external and miss the internal.
I fall to this to. Giving great focus to what I eat and don’t eat, how I exercise, what input I’m allowing into all my senses, and how I sleep. And fail to look inward to the core of my being. As you said, the who and how of me. Our world has never contained more access to so much information to help us. And meanwhile we have the inner programming on repeat that overrides anything and everything we could help ourselves with.
Thus with this message of Biblical Functional Medicine I’m brought to questioning if the church itself, is functional, and is providing guidance and counsel for more than just informed people, but highly functioning people. Is the next series on Daniel relevant for the congregants sitting in the pews who have little capacity to let anything in and take root due to their internal feelings of fear and inadequacy? Where do we meet them head on in their lives?
This reality struck me a decade ago as I saw congregants from my own church, sitting in the pews as messages wafted over their heads, only to visit you in your practice where they uncovered what was actually going on in their lives, and you then tended to what truly matters. Their true…life. To which gives question as to whether they are better served sitting in a church pew, or being a patient of functional medicine, and even more…Biblical Functional Medicine.
A Note Of Confirmation
In 2022 I invited Dr Thema Bryant onto my podcast. She was then President Elect of the APA…American Psychological Association. Her position was given extra attention in that she was female and black. But she was on my show due to my interest in her personal mission to bring spirituality into psychology. In her words and my subsequent paraphrasing, she realized a majority of the bedrock of humanity was built on a spiritual foundation. To leave spirituality out of psychology was leaving out a main tenant of humanity’s core existence, and in her opinion, negligent. I would say the same for medicine. Not only does it strike me as a responsibility to bring faith into medicine, but might it be the very thing medicine is lacking in order to truly meet people in providing true health and wellness?
I so value your wisdom and heart to serve, Randy. It’s an honor to call you friend.
Kevin Miller is an author and host of Self Helpful podcast.
-->