Stan,

So good to hear from you again! Last I had a chance to look in here I thought you were headed for Branson, Missouri, perhaps to live there permanently. Did I misunderstand that?

Let me make a note of the "near starvation diet" bit. The month I lost 12 pounds, I ate twice as much food as I had in the months previously. That was during a health program someone in my congregation put on a year and a half back in Idaho. It isn't volume of food, but what foods are chosen that makes the difference. I couldn't stuff any more into my belly three times a day running for a month, and still lost 12 pounds. How do you figure that as "starvation rations"?

The simple and easy to apply principles curiously parallel the original diet given to our race in Eden (see Genesis 1:29 for details, plus Genesis 3:18 for the minor adaption). This includes:

1. Eating whole foods rather than processed foods.

2. No animal products.

3. No, or little visible oils.

4. Eat a variety of fruits, vegtables, whole grains and nuts in as unaltered of form as possible.

5. Eat your largest meal for breakfast and your smallest for supper.

Do that for a month and your body will start taking some of the decades of animal product produced cholesterol off the walls of the arteries supplying your brain, heart, penis, and other vital organs. Most type 2 diabetics will either be cutting their insulin significantly, or eliminating it entirely. The body does repair the damage we do to it, so long as we don't wait to long to get started.

I had a church member who was largely vegan. He nearly drown on a trip to Hawaii, and ended up having a heart exam as a result when he was in his early 80's by way of follow through. They were amazed he survived at all, and were attempting to find out if he had passed out due to a heart problem or stroke. The doctor called in another when he had performed the exam. He said, "Would you look at this! This guy is over 80, yet he has the arteries of a teen ager."

We all gather our information for life choices from the best sources avialable to us. As for the coffee, verses tobacco, versus cocaine, not all insurance exams are based on the full spectrum of available knowledge concerning health style practices.

As for monkeys eating meat, some do, of course. More so in recent years than previously, I'm guessing. Particularly as their habitats begin to shrink and food sources are scarcer. This wasn't the way they were originally, however. Like man, all the animals were plant-eaters, including our current predator populations. (See Genesis 1:29-32 and Genesis 3:18). The Bible says when God recreates our world, they will be again.

Things in nature have changed greatly from their original form as God made them. The present, and even what can be dug from the ground in the fossil record does not provide a reliable guide to Earth's most ancient form. That has been lost. The world is greatly altered from its form as God originally made it. Enough so that God destroyed what had been so profoundly marred at the time of Noah's flood. Those fossils are a record of what was marred, not an evidence of the original Creation. That had been long lost before the great planet wide fossil making event occurred.

Nature is not an appropriate place to look to determine how we should behave. It is disordered because of man's disobedience to his Maker, which profoundly altered his environment. Until God steps in and sets that right again, nature is not a sufficient guide to determine a correct and beneficial course of action.

So here we are, still speaking truth as we know it, and hopefully coming to value each other, if not adopt each other's views, in the process. I know people can change their world views and their resultant life choices and outcomes dramatically. That happened in my own life and in the lives of a whole lot of people I know of personally, and even had a part in helping the process to occur.

What do you think allows a person to shift from one way of viewing the universe to another? Stan, from the best I can tell, you're a thorough-going polytheist, having championed every world view at least in part at some time through your writing posted here. How might Jim come to a different conclusion about the questions he poses on a fundamental enough level that it gives him something other than mere physical gratification of tastes in his addictions and flavors at the table as his highest life value? Is there any chance you might settle permanently for a single unified world view rather than circling around every new lamppost you come to like a moth who has mistaken it for the moon?

Would there ever be something that would make me even wish to deny the clear evidence of fulfilled prophecy I can hold in my hand in the Bible and traced in its detail in the life of Jesus just this morning again--or to find some other explanation for the many plainly miraculous things I have personally witnessed and experienced that affirm the existence and ongoing intervention of the God of the Bible, whom I worship? Is there any neutral place where all of us could go to speak to each other and truly hear each other enough to do more than shout over the tops of the walls that our world views inevitably errect between us? Sometimes I've longed for a neutral place where all alike might meet and speak together without fear, anger, defensiveness, or mistrust of each other. Perhaps this forum is the place where that has the greatest likelihood of occurring...

I know change is possible. When I see it can add 7 to 20 years of healthy life to entire populations in this life, and that it holds the promise of allowing a life that measures with the life of God Himself, it seems (from the perspective of my world view) desirable. But perhaps not to all.

The materialist prefers extinction and a disolving into chemicals at life's end to eternal life at the resurection.

The agnostic prefers his questions and his freedom to judge God Himself while living for the sake of his favorite addictions, current food tastes and other pleasures rather than to even listen to a Book that might take these from him.

The deist prefers to affirm the Creator of all things then took a hike and won't be back rather than to acknowledge himself as anything less than full master of his destiny--on planet Earth in this lifetime, at least.

The polytheist prefers his spiritual promiscuity of flitting from one conflicting world view to the next without ever committing himself to more than what his own mind finds most appealing at the moment and his own judgment approves of as the correct shape for the mental idol he creates in his own image.

The pantheist prefers a final destiny that allows him to drop like a rain drop into the sea of Nirvana nothingness and cease to exist at all.

Maybe in the end, we all simply get what we've been determinely asking for all along. Frankly, I prefer what my world offers to me to those things offered as the final outcomes by all other world views combined.

Keep thinking, Stan. Keep writing. You are very dear to my heart, old friend.

Skip

P.S. I'd like to put in one word in favor of a "starvation diet", at least on a temporary basis. A few months back, I was at the top of my normal weight range for my height. Any more and I would have slipped up into the mildly obese category. A variety of factors, particularly moving to a new, cold country where I didn't have my usual walking places located yet, was responsible.

In connection with the "Let Freedom Ring" series of sermons my students and members have just completed preaching, we encourged all from 7th grade upward to fast for three meals running. Our church members at the host sites, our school staff, and even our administrators on up two levels in our church structure did the same in support of the meetings and as a spiritual discipline prescribed in the Sermon on the Mount for seeking God's special favor concerning a need. In this case, it was our series of 14 meetings in a variety of sites, including four here locally.

As for me, I fasted longer. No one but my family knew of this until me telling you. I fasted one day for each of the 14 sermons in the series. During that time, I maintained my usual very busy schedule and even increased my physical activity significantly. I lost 30 pounds by the end of that time, dropping from 203 pounds to 173 pounds. I drank plenty of water, but took no other nourishment of any kind.

Judi and I marked the end of that fast by a nice sit down Italian dinner at a fine resturant. I ate everything on my plate with relish, including my pasta, a large salad, bread, and a couple glasses of lemonaid.

I find I view food differently now than I did before the fast, both for myself, and for others. When a request came in from a familly with four children for emergency food at the Community Service Center I oversee, I considered far more carefully what items I was putting into the boxes I took to them. As I had saved considerable $$$ through not eating myself during those two weeks, I was able to stop by the local grocery store for fresh produces and other items to top off that basket properly. I saw what they needed by way of food far more clearly for going without myself.

I think I appreciate food as a whole on levels I might not have without that fast, and this was not due to ongoing hunger pains. Those pretty well subside after three days. I now eat far more because of intentional choice in support of my world view--which includes the care of my body as a part of my worship of the Creator, who gave me that body and desires both my good health and my care for it. Specifically, I've shifted far more toward the strictly vegan diet than the previous ovo-lacto vegetarian diet of my upbringing. I've also considered Jesus' 40 day fast in the wilderness and Ghandi's fasting that brought an end to the armed conflict in the newly freed country of India in a different way--not as impossibilities, but as something worth emulating at whatever point such actions should require that level of spiritual discipline.

Prayer is seeking God with your mind. Fasting is seeking the same God with your body. The giving of alms, money given to the poor, is seeking God with the physical resources within your disposal. All three are equally recommended and expected by Jesus in His famous Sermon on the Mount. All are to be done secretly, rather than for public show. All come with the promise of God's blessing on those engaging in these spiritual disciplines.

As for other benefits that came from that longest fast to date... They were many. I found I had a far clearer mind. I had more time to devote to other things I needed and wished to do. I spent more time sitting in a bathtub alone and with my dear wife than I had in the two years previously. I came to appreciate my own animal body as something more than a food eating machine. I recieved several visions and dreams of guidance during the course of the fast that allowed me to give the guidance necessary to a group of first time speakers and sponsors fearful of the approaching series of meetings--the line to the spiritual realm was stronger. My preaching and spiritual leadership packed a new and vital potency that others sensed. I had more influence with people in a whole variety of settings. I understood a great deal more of the Bible I had been reading right along during my morning devotions. This included some of the teachings of Jesus concerning the Holy Spirit and also the understanding of His picture language that sometimes had baffled me in the past. It simply made sense now. I could follow His thought.

I felt far better generally, though sometimes sensed the sort of physical weakness that can follow donating blood for a day. This was an intermittent thing, however. Other times I felt greater physical strength than usual. Some truly remarkable things were achieved and experienced during a trip into Boston for a day.

During the fast, I experienced life on a different plane than normally occurs. That was not a less desirable plane of existence. I also am able to fit into a whole bunch of clothes that had been hanging in my closet for the past three years--an entire "new again" wardrobe. As my strength returned, so did my sexual appetite to a far greater degree than had been apparent for a number of years. I functioned in bed before the fast, but I functioned in bed a whole lot better than I had following the "starvation diet" of no food at all for two weeks. A great deal of sexual vigor returned. The fact was, I hadn't lived in a body like I had coming out of those two weeks of fasting for a couple decades into the past. It literally put 20 years back into me in two weeks flat.

So laugh at a starvation diet and the restriction of mere tastes and addictions in view of a greater good as much as you like. I know in my own body, mind and spirit from personal experience that restraint trumps indulgence any day of the week. I really don't see any downside from even extended fasting at all. There is no danger of anorexia, since the length of the fast is determined in advance, and ends at the end of that time. It is far preferable to mere dieting, since food is eliminated entirely as a point of focus for the duration. I'm interested in even longer fasts, for reasons of sufficient spiritual magnitude to call for such, in the future.

It is really ironic: Fasting to most peoples' way of thinking seems like a deprivation. Actually, it is an incredible addition on multiple levels. That I can only report. It probably won't make sense to anybody who hasn't actually experienced it. Except to my wife, of course. As we share the same bed, she cannot help but notice the difference.



Last edited by Skip Johnson; 04/20/07 02:38 AM.