Morality

I’m wrapping up my summary of Conversation A from my post a couple days ago.  Today, I’m revisiting the “fat people” comment.

This is in response to a specific discussion on, of all places, Facebook.  The original comment was to a young woman expressing frustration and normal teenage angst.  The person listed “tolerance of obesity” among the signs that we are in serious moral trouble.

That makes no sense to me.  Now, I don’t deny that obesity is a problem in the sense that there are clear health risks.  And I am absolutely in favor of taking care of the bodies we are given.  No argument there.  But is obesity really a sign of impending Apocalypse?  It seems like such a foolish thing to obsess over, given the wide range of really horrifying things we could list.

I suppose I may be taking this somewhat personally.  No, I’m not obese.  However, my mother was.  When I see comments like that, I recall being a child and having classmates mock me because my mother was fat.  Even thought I was not a fat child, my classmates knew about my mother and knew that was the way to get to me, to hurt me.  Yet everyone who really knew my mother loved her.  She was kind, compassionate, and giving.  Mom loved giving to others–her money, her time, and her skills.  She volunteered with my girl scout troop, tirelessly hosting and providing snacks, teaching us how to sew, and listening to us.  She spent 8 years volunteering at an inner city school, playing games, reading, and sharing lunch with children who desperately needed someone to love them.  She took care of a neighbor when her family was in crisis.  Even after her obesity had destroyed her physical body, rendering her wheelchair-bound, she found ways to care for her neighbors in her apartment building.  Recently, a friend asked me for one of her recipes.  We had been out of touch for awhile, so she didn’t know of mom’s death.  When I told her, she expressed sympathy and said that my mom had been a good woman.  I find it very hard to believe that my mother’s weight problems were bigger than her loving heart.

It’s not all roses, however.  My mother did not die directly of problems caused by her weight.  She actually died of cancer, which had gone undiagnosed, for probably 10 years (very slow-growing type).  Why didn’t she seek treatment?  Because of the stigma of her weight.  She was embarrassed, particularly by the fact that the type of exam needed to diagnose the problem was physically uncomfortable for her because of her weight.  And not everyone she knew was particularly sympathetic.  Some people had (and still have) attitudes much like the person I mentioned above, believing thinness is equivalent to godliness.

Before anyone starts thinking this jerk is alone in his beliefs, let me put that to rest.  Another “friend” posted on her blog that she thought there was something “wrong” with Christians being overweight.  Not even obese, simply “overweight.”  And how many Christians do I know who obsess over their weight, trying one new diet after another?  Somehow, this idea has permeated our faith.  Where does it end?

As for me, I refuse to discuss dieting or weight in conjunction with my faith.  Jesus didn’t say they’d know us by our thinness, he said they’d know us by our love.  So where is the love?

After yesterday’s post, I thought I’d follow up with a few more thoughts on that first type of conversation, the one in which someone tries to convince me that the world is essentially becoming more and more dreadful.

First, I think this perspective is necessary for anyone who subscribes to the theology of John Nelson Darby.  From that point of view, the world has to go downhill.  So never mind the fact that there certainly have been positive changes, by which even the most conservative and fundamentalist among us have benefited.

Second, there is a certain underlying attitude that the United States either represents “the world” or even is “the world” (or, at least, the only part of the world that really matters).  Sometimes the rest of the English-speaking countries may get thrown in there for good measure, whether they like it or not.  At any rate, it’s not clear whether the attitude is ignorant of other cultures, views us as superior to other cultures (aside from our state of moral decay?), or believes that other cultures are somehow just primitive versions of our own.

Third, most people who hold fast to the moral decline view also believe wholeheartedly that we are a “Christian” nation, or at least used to be.  There is no doubt that Christianity has been the dominant religion in the United States.  And those same Christians, over the few short centuries of our nation’s history, have managed to bully, persecute, enslave, and slaughter people they didn’t happen to like.  I wouldn’t say that we’ve gone from being genuine followers of Christ to being moral degenerates.  In fact, there seems to be a reawakening of real, authentic Christianity, led by a few people who are daring to step outside of the narrowly defined box of American Christianity.

Finally, it is interesting to me what evidence is used to define moral decay.  I’m not convinced that battling gay marriage, or abortion, or sex, drugs & rock ‘n’ roll, are the answers to bringing God’s Kingdom down here to where we are.  When we pour more money into trying to prevent things we think are sinful that we do into feeding the poor, clothing the naked, and healing the sick, then we have a very warped perspective on which problems need to be addressed.  I suppose some smart ass is going to suggest that we could do both.  Look around you: Are there still homeless people?  Are children still going to bed hungry?  Are there places without clean water?  Is there still oppression and genocide?  Then we’re not very successful at doing both, are we?