Body.. Complete with instructions

The One True God is far above any one analogy or role, or even entire sets of comparisons, and yet as I've grown as His child I find that my faith has grown as a result of my growth as an engineer. God is far more than the greatest of engineers, but in engineering we follow rules and guidelines which I see reflected in His creation.

The first of these rules is that things NEVER get better on their own, and in fact the most reliable mechanisms and electronics have "Mean Times Between Failures" and "Uptimes" which are counted in minutes or hours, but seldom in days or weeks. Even the simplest, best-designed processes require maintenance every few days, and none of them are self-sustaining. A few are starting to be called "learning" because they can amass enough data to begin to make better and better "decisions" or even to go faster and faster, but in reality they cannot begin to "learn" until they are set in motion by their human builders, and they cannot sustain themselves without human intervention, including cooling, lubrication, replacement of worn parts, electrical power, and a host of other critical resources.

When God created us (originally perfectly), he too built in certain needs -- food, companionship, emotional fulfillment, warmth, air, sunlight, etc. The fact that we are not self-sustaining points to God, while the fact that we are fragile, limited, immoral, and self-destructive reminds us of our downfall -- sometimes called "original sin". These limits, none of which are outside of God's control, in the light of His Word show us our sin, His Goodness, and our dependence on Him.

One of the other "rules" in engineering is that a process is only as good as those who use it, and maintain it. I would be a pitiful engineer if I set up the most brilliant process in the world and then handed it over without further explanation to people totally unfamiliar with its workings or its maintenance needs, setting them "free" to do whatever they wanted with it. A good manual, and/or set of drawings and instructions, is critical for the process to do what it was designed to do.

God is not limited by engineering rules, but I believe that He too has provided a manual for proper operation and maintenance, in the form of His Word. Countless lives have borne out the impact of His Word upon spirit, emotions, and even mental health, but I believe that His Word also contains the best instructions for healthy physical living. After all, why would the designer's instructions not be the best?

This is a "Body" post, and I realize that I've already gotten way too spiritual for some, so I'll limit my remarks here to God's instructions for our bodies. I recognize God's hierarchy, that our spiritual well-being is far more important than that of our physical bodies, but in calling us to be excellent in all things I am assured that God does not intend for us to neglect our physical bodies at all. On the contrary, His "Old Testament laws" as found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, as well as throughout the rest of His Word, are not to be ignored (except those which Jesus specifically replaced, that is the priesthood and the sacrifices) and in many cases deal with physical well-being.

"Modern research" has borne out what God told His people thousands of years ago; in fact, I would hazard to guess that few of us would live up to "newly" recognized standards for diet, exercise, and rest (often called "recovery" today) as well as an Israelite in 500 BC would have done. Don't eat shellfish, hogs, bottom-feeders, and other toxin-collectors (God designed them for the specific purpose of cleaning up stuff that would be deadly to much of the rest of His creation); work hard for 6 days; rest completely on the seventh day -- God's instructions to His people were specific, intentional, detailed, and good. Dr. Don Colbert does a terrific job of expounding on many of God's dietary and physical laws and instructions, and how to apply them, but really we can get a pretty good understanding of how God's "Levitical laws" aid in our physical welfare by just taking the time to literally read them.

I realize that many, if not most, Christians today, even those who are disposed to careful reading and understanding of the Old Testament, dismiss many of the Levitical laws as not being relevant to us, in the light of Christ for our salvation, and cite the example of Peter's vision of "unclean" foods in Acts 10 as evidence that we don't have to follow the Old Testament dietary guidelines. But Peter's vision led him to take the Gospel to non-Jews -- those he had formerly considered "unclean", and so it was intended (and he understood it) as spiritual teaching, not dismissal of good physical instructions. Jesus Himself said that He came to fulfill the Law, not to destroy it, and Paul pointed out that the Law, given by God, was as such good, even though it was never intended to bring the righteousness of salvation (but instead was intended to show that we could never achieve righteousness apart from God).

There are plenty of Christian cliches I dispute as misleading (or outright lies), but here's one I like: "Read the manual."

(Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Acts 10 and 11, Matthew 5, Romans 7)