Making an idol out of health
Stories of the search for eternal youth and indestructible health go back to the earliest mythology. Ancients sought the fountain of life first. But the bards of old all knew that an eternal *earthly* life was nothing more than a shallow, shadow of an existence, devoid vulnerability, and which ultimately ends in sorrow.
There’s no doubt that scientific advances, including those in medicine, have helped human beings live longer and healthier lives. Science and Catholicism do not conflict.
However, it’s also obvious that our culture has made an idol out of health. Pharmaceuticals, supplements, diet books, fitness plans... the profits of industries dedicated to health are astonishing (and oddly disproportionate to our actual health).
Do we count God’s gifts the same way we count calories or macros? Do we make time for prayer the way way make time for exercise? Do we beg God’s forgiveness with the same fervor with which we beg for medicines that cure cancer and vaccines that are supposed to prevent it?
No.
Not in this culture, anyway.
Why are we searching for eternal life on earth? Truly, caring for our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit is good and right. But it is only good and right insofar as it enables us to serve God better. If pursuit of health and fitness puts God on the back burner (no time to pray, no money to tithe?) or if fear of death makes us afraid to experience the life we have at this moment, we have rejected God’s promise of an eternal life in favor of a temporal one.
I only have one God, and I won’t sacrifice union with Him for temporal health. As long as my pursuits of health are done with service to God in mind, I’m doing okay. But as soon as they veer into self-worship, or complete avoidance of suffering, I have lost my way.
Ultimately, such idols will be torn down. Whether we dismantle them ourselves or the the Good LORD does it for us, it is right and just to reject all idols, health included. To be vulnerable and small, weak and broken on the outside the way we are weak and broken in the inside... in this way we can do as St John says, “I must decrease, so that He may increase.”
Yesterday someone accused me of being selfish for being sad about not being able to seek Jesus through Eucharistic Adoration due to restrictions in my state.
This is what I told her: My body will only be here for a short time. One way or another, it will die. But my soul is eternal. I will be prudent with my physical health, but I will guard my soul with the utmost care. The Sacraments are the way to God’s grace, and I will not be ashamed of seeking the graces God has offered through His sacraments.
