Lately, I've been reading Candace Cameron Bure's book Reshaping it All. Her book is awesome, and if you want to learn more about her or her book, you can find out all of that information here. I'm not here to write about her career, but rather one of the points in her book I found interesting.
Candace bases a lot of her diet and weight philosophy on biblical principles. For instance, the part that got me thinking this morning is this verse in Proverbs:
There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. (Proverbs 14:12, NIV).This passage brought me right to the section in her book where she talks about the flesh and the Spirit. It's actually a fairly easy concept to understand.Basically, there is a battle going on inside our bodies everyday. The battle of what our physical bodies want, and what our Spirit knows to be good for us. In a way, it's a battle between our heart telling us what feels right,and our minds telling us what IS right. They don't always match up. I tend to view it in the same way I would view Freud's id, ego, and superego. The id, or the flesh, is the part of us that is at its simplest form, an animal. It wants to eat sleep, and enjoy everything that can offer pleasure to our physical bodies. Then we have the Spirit, the superego. The one that knows what is RIGHT and BEST for us. It is God's voice within us showing us and guiding us, if only we listen to it. The ego, is basically us. Candace doesn't really discuss this, but I'm going to. The ego is essentially us, we decide whether or not to listen to the flesh or the Spirit. After all, we have a choice in the matter.
Yes it seems a little funny to be discussing Freud and biblical matters to many. I know I never would have thought about it much before a class I took in college in which we learned something interesting. Sigmund Freud was Jewish. His theory on the id was actually biblically based and taught in Jewish communities!
Anyways, back to the book. Candace writes that when society is telling you to follow your heart and do what feels good or is pleasurable, it's not really good advice, and will lead to folly. Why? Because when we do what feels good, without making sure that it is good with God, we run the risk of not following God in our lives. As Proverbs tell us, this is a path we can take, "but in the end it leads to death."
In another section, I think she puts it in a way that makes a lot of sense to me. PRoverbs 31 tells women we should be getting up while it's still dark and going to bed later than everyone in our household. I believe it is showing us that our jobs as women are never done. Whether we are mothers or not, we still have a lot of responsibilities around our homes and we should never forget that. No, I may not WANT to get up at 4:15 to get everything done. But if tht is the best time for me to wake up to finish everything that needs to get done in a day, then that is when I should be getting up. In the same way, I should listen to the prompting of the Spirit as God tries to guide me throughout my day.
Right now, I'm working on controlling my impulsive nature. Giving myself time to think about things, and asking God to guide my every move. I'm trying to listen to His gentle promptings through out my day. But, I'm human, I make mistakes because I'm not perfect. If I were, I would never have anything to learn, and that would make for a pretty boring life. But I don't want to follow my heart in all things, but rather God's Holy Spirit. For
For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature (Galatians 5:17)
1 comment:
Very good post. I have a child with mental health issues and this is something we have been learning about.
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