The Rest of Life by Witherington Ben;

Author:Witherington, Ben;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

The Normal Christian Life of Someone Who Is a Light to the World

One of the books that most impacted me during seminary was Ron Sider’s classic, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.4 This book served as a wakeup call to me personally that I needed to be concerned about the 1.2 billion persons who live in poverty. And one of the things I needed to be most concerned with was my own wasting of food, as well as indulging in various sorts of foods that were not good for me. Sider raised the consciousness of all of us when it came to caring about the poor, and how our own conduct in regard to food and drink can either be a good witness or a bad one, either a witness that shows we care about the poor, or that we really don’t much care about them. I began to realize that even our decisions about basic things in life such as eating and drinking needed to come under the searchlight of Christ.

Eating and drinking are not condemned in the Bible per se, but in fact it is not just overindulgence that is critiqued. A thoughtless, self-centered, self-indulgent attitude about life in general is critiqued, and this affects the way we should view our eating and drinking. While Christians are not called to be buzz-kills or killjoys, and there are special occasions to enjoy feasting with friends and/or family and/or brothers and sisters in Christ, we must bear in mind that God calls us to (1) take care of ourselves, which includes proper diet and exercise; (2) care about the poor, and do something practical about that sense of compassion; (3) be a good witness to others that the body is a gift from God and indeed the dwelling place of God’s spirit. There is something inherently sacred or sacrilegious about what we do with the body, and without question gluttony is a sin condemned in the Bible.

What I am really talking about here is being a global and mission-minded Christian. If you have worked in poor countries in the world, as I have from time to time, you see how the other half lives. Indeed, you can see this in towns all over America if you just look. It’s not just, as John Donne put it, that “every man’s death diminishes me, for I am a part of mankind”; it’s that Jesus loves and died for all the peoples of the world. We, therefore, have an obligation to care about their plight, to show compassion, and to live in a way that frees up resources so we can help the poor. One way to do that is to stop spending so much on ourselves, including on food and drink for ourselves. What we do with our so-called discretionary income speaks volumes about our priorities in life. “To whom more is given, more is required,” says the Bible, and this includes those of us who are not wealthy by American standards, but by world standards are actually rich and spoiled and pampered.

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