I was thinking about my last entry…Can Losing Weight be a part of a Christian’s spirituality? I left the post with the thought that it is a part of my own spirituality. Now the question is WHY and HOW.
The greatest struggle that I wrote about is the deep and wide chasm between knowing it and doing it – at least in my life right now!! To cross that barrier demands not just the brute will but also a yielding of my spirit to the Spirit of God and that’s really tough. Someone said that for the truth to travel from the head to the heart may only be 18 inches but it is really a long, long journey! I must admit that it is true when it comes to losing weight. I don’t believe it is because of eating too much or laziness BUT the lack of discipline to do physical exercise. It is really easy for me to sit in front of my laptop and type away sermons, teachings lessons, planning and blogging. It is also easy to surf the net, watch movie and listening to music BUT when it comes to real physical exercise – that’s another story.
So to me, it is not just knowing it but doing it. So I began to probe further why is it that I know the right thing to do and yet cannot find the strength to do it. This is a real epistemological dilemma that I am facing. So my question is that even before we go to the part of doing it, the knowing it is also problematic. Can we really know that we know? Is it possible that we think we know when we haven’t yet know know what we know is what we know? That is the epistemological dilemma that I am facing with regard to losing weight. I said: “I think I know.” Descartes said: “I think therefore I am.” He was saying that because he has the capacity to think therefore he can know that he is real and not an illusion. Using the same reasoning, I think I know that losing weight is important to my health – to my spirituality, therefore that knowledge is not merely illusional. I really know that losing weight is important to my well-being. That knowledge is firmly established in me YET why is it so difficult to do it? Some said that it is sin, the weakness of our flesh, and what not that prevents us from “DOING” it.
Perhaps it is not enough to know that you know that losing weight is important BUT rather WHO you know that you know holds the key to your health and more rightly your life. Evelyn Underhill said that “a spiritual life is simply a life in which all that we do come from the centre, where we are anchored in God: a life soaked through and through by a sense of His reality and claim, and self-given to the greater movement of His Will.” Spirituality is about being attentive to the Spirit’s voice, open to his transforming impulses, and empowered by his indwelling presence.
Coming back to the beginning before I loose you…..what I am trying to say is that knowing that I need to loose weight should not be the starting point of my knowledge but the knowledge of the Holy One is the right place to start. That to me is my Christian spirituality; it is about living all of life before God in the transforming and empowering presence of his Spirit.
I don’t know whether I am making any sense at all over here. That’s an epistemological knot as well! Ha-ha. Go figure it out!!
August 17, 2009 at 12:19 pm |
[...] Part of a Christian’s Spirituality?” and the next day (the next entry) I wrote “An Epistemological Delimma.” In those two entries I was trying to rationalize my struggle in losing weight. I argued that [...]