Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 433 | Healthy Body Image vs. Unhealthy Enabling | Q&A

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

Today we're answering listener questions on topics including what to do when your spouse turns away from the faith, the difference between "boundaries" and "cancel culture," and how we as Christians should respond to the very trendy idea that being overweight is actually healthy. --- Today's Sponsors: Raycon wireless earbuds in your ears can make all the difference! Go to BuyRaycon.com/ALLIE & save 15% off your entire order! Good Ranchers delivers 100% American steak or chicken directly to your door! It's individually wrapped, vacuum sealed and ready to grill. Go to GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE & save $20 off, plus get free express shipping! --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today we are doing a Q and A episode. You guys sent me some questions on Instagram. I am going to answer them some theological, some cultural, some political. I'm very excited to get into them. First question that we've got, how do you deal with a husband who has turned away from the faith? So you married a guy. He said he was a Christian. You were both following the Lord or you both thought that you were following the Lord when you first got married. And then he decided that he was no longer going to be a part of the Christian faith. Maybe his faith was never genuine in the first place or maybe he is just going through a season of doubt, a season of spiritual turmoil, a season of temptation and the Lord is going

to bring him back. As his wife, obviously, your desire is that he knows Christ, not just so that he knows joy and he knows peace and he knows assurance today. But also, so he is with God for all of eternity, for people that we love. Like, that is our number one desire. That's our number one goal is for them to know the gospel, for them to be reconciled to the holy God who made them. So what does the Bible have to say about this?

The Bible does talk about not being unequally yoked with unbelievers, that we don't believe that we are as Christians to make. marry someone who is not a believer. Marriage is already hard. It can be already hard because life is hard and you go through seasons of difficulty, seasons of maybe tension, seasons of some kind of calamity in your life that can make marriage even harder than it already is. All kinds of relationships are difficult, but especially when you are in such close

contact with the same person every day. You have an intimate relationship with them. You know everything about them. They know everything about you. You notice all of their tics. You know their habits and you know their hangups. Of course, marriage is going to be hard because it's the wedding of two sinners. The Bible does tell us that that love covers a multitude of sins. And we also realize that as Christians, we believe that marriage is a covenant bond. Matthew 19, Jesus and Matthew 19, and answering a question about divorce. He says, what God has joined together, let not man separate. And of course, he does give some reasons for divorce,

but still, we understand that it is a commitment that we make to another person through thick and thin. That is why we believe that it is, that's part of why we believe that it is better, that it is right, that it is obedient as a Christian to marry another Christian. Yes, of course, you may fall in love with someone who is, not a believer, but those feelings of passion and all-consuming romance, they have to, they must in a healthy way, transition into a steady kind of commitment, a kind of love that, yes, sometimes is emotional and yes, very often is passionate, but more often than not is

actually a choice that you make to be committed to that person, to love that person as you love yourself, to choose that person over and over again. And so from the beginning, we do believe as Christians that a Christian should marry a Christian, that having that foundation of Christ is what makes the weathering the thick and the thin possible and not just possible, but joyful and glorifying and worth it. Now, if you marry a believer and then say, if you marry a believer, and then say, years down the road or say a decade down the road, something happens and they have a crisis of faith and they say, you know, I don't know if I believe that anymore. What do you do? Or maybe you married someone when you were not a Christian and he was not a Christian after marriage. He did not

become a Christian after marriage. And of course, again, your chief desire is that they know Christ and that you can have a marriage that is a reflective of Christ in the church as Ephesians 5 says. you want them to know the joy and the freedom that you have now found in Christ. The Bible actually speaks to these kinds of situations in which the husband in particular is not a Christian, but the wife is. 1. Peter 1, 3, 2 through 3. Likewise, wives be subject to your own husband so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be one without a word by the conduct of their wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct. So the fruit of the spirit coming out in your life,

the fruit of the spirit that is defined by Galatian 6, the kind of spirit and respectfulness and purity that we see articulated in 1st Peter 1. That kind of conduct, that kind of behavior, the Bible tells us, can be used by the Holy Spirit to win over a husband to Christ. I don't think that means that you don't share the gospel. I don't think that means that you don't articulate that which is true. But what this passage is saying is that, by being a godly wife that is first and foremost submissive to Christ and also in a respectful and a healthy way subject to your husband that you actually make a really good case for the gospel. Now, I know for those of you listening, maybe you're new to the podcast or you just have a difficult

time with that word subject or submit, trust me, I understand is someone with a strong personality, someone who is independent, someone who has lots of opinions, someone who has always struggled with that word that I see in the Bible, submit to your husbands, be subject to your husbands, I hear you, I feel you, I know exactly what you're thinking, I know exactly how you are feeling. But if you go to Ephesians 5 and you see the command again reiterated that women are supposed to submit to their husbands as to the Lord, you will also see a command for the husband, that the husband is supposed to love his wife as Christ loves the church. Well, Christ died for the church.

Christ laid down his life for the church. The responsibility of the husband to love his wife is much more cumbersome, much bigger than the wife's responsibility to submit to her husband. That doesn't mean it's not hard. That doesn't mean that it's not difficult, that it doesn't rub up against our pride. But men are not off the hook. Men are held to an extremely high standard, a Christ-like standard of self. self-sacrificial love and care that they're supposed to demonstrate in marriage. And yes, wives are

supposed to submit to our husbands. Now, what does it mean to actually submit to our husbands? Well, as we can see from the description in Ephesians 5, it certainly doesn't mean this kind of master and servant kind of relationship. It's not a dictator and his subject that is not what it looks like in a Christian marriage. Of course, we believe that women, uh, can be able to speak up that of course we have opinions and that we make decisions and that we have responsibility. It is not this kind of handmaid in situation. It is the husband is the leader spiritually of the family and is leading the family in a direction towards being God glorifying in every area of their life. At the end of the day, he is going to be held responsible for the decisions made for

the family. That does not mean that the wife doesn't have a say. As you can imagine, I have a lot of say about a lot of different things. And my husband is wonderful. And we do so many things together. At the end of the day, I am going to trust him as someone who is following Christ to make the best ultimate decisions for our family. That's what that means. And I try to be as respectful as possible. That doesn't mean, again, that I feel like I have to be a church mouse in any way. And as we've talked about, before this kind of language, this kind of command to women in the times that these epistles were being written would have been like balm to the weary soul for women because they were looking out in culture and they were seeing women objectify. They were seeing women used to sexual objects.

They were seeing women being used and abused by their husbands. They would see them being discarded or tossed aside when the husband wants to sleep with a servant or sleep with a prostitute women were not highly regarded in a lot of these secular communities in which Christians were living. And so for Paul to say to the church at Ephesus, hey husbands, it's not just the wife that has a responsibility to act a certain way as a Christian. You have a huge responsibility. And that responsibility is to be like Christ, to cherish them, to love your wife, to sacrifice yourself for your wife, to lay yourself down for your wife. That would have been radical at the time. for women to hear that, wow, my husband has a responsibility to be faithful and to be loving and to be

gentle and to be kind and to be sacrificial towards me, that he's on the hook by God to treat me a certain way, to behave a certain way, that would have been very different from what the culture was teaching and from what traditional religion had taught up until that time. So now, of course, our feminist proclivities say, oh, or do, or submission, subjection, that sounds so terrible. But to the Christian woman at this time hearing that marriage is actually a refuge for her, actually a safe place for her, a place where she is going to be, should be, loved and respected, even as she loves and respects her husband, would have been really good news and it should be good news for us. And the Bible tells us that in doing that, in showing our husbands what

it means to be a Christlike and a godly wife, even if that husband is not being a godly and a Christ like husband yet, that that is actually very persuasive. James 516 also says, therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. So of course, we believe that another solution to this or something else that we are called to do if we want someone to come to Christ, especially someone that we love as much as our husband, is to pray for them, is to pray that the Lord would save them.

that pray that the Lord would soften their hearts. Yes, you can pray also that people will come into their lives, that a mentor would come into their lives, that there would be other people who surround him that share with him the gospel and make the gospel of Christ attractive by their godly behavior. But ultimately, it's going to be God who turns the heart of stone to the heart of flesh. And the prayer of a righteous person, which all Christians are righteous because it's not our righteousness. It's Christ's righteousness given to us. It has great power. So that's my long-winded answer to the first question. Let's move on to the second question. The second question is saying

the gospel is sufficient, divisive. I think that's a wonderful question. And my answer to it is yes and no. So I think where this is coming from is that there is a debate among, in particular, evangelical Christians about so-called racial reconciliation and what is called racial justice. So we hear from a certain sphere of evangelical Christians that, okay, we need to adopt some of critical race theory. We need to look to the world a little bit when it comes to what racial justice should look like. We might need to link arms somewhat with Black Lives Matter, or we at least don't need to condemn or criticize those people. We actually do need the government. We do need monitoring.

reparations. We do need a little bit of these secular ideologies to kind of help us along in the way of racial justice and racial reconciliation. Now, some of them might not say that explicitly, but there are certainly plenty of Christians who learn from Robin DiAngelo and Ibram-X-Kindy and who have adopted more of their language and definitions of equity and social justice and so-called racial justice than anything that aligns with Scripture. And the response to that kind of movement has been, hey, the gospel is enough. When you're talking about the problem of racism, the gospel is the only thing that can get rid of racism. The question is not whether, and this is where things get lost.

The question has never been within Christianity about whether or not racism exists. We all know that it exists because we understand that hate in the human heart exists. And that can manifest itself in a variety of ways that end in isom. It could be racism. It could be ableism. It could be sexism. This could all be hatred of a particular kind of person because of some sort of immutable characteristic.

These are all forms of hate that reside in the human heart. So there's never been a question of whether or not racism exists. there has been a question of to what extent. So in 2021 or just even in recent history, is systemic racism. That means racism down to the core of what America is that infects all of the systems. Is that still alive and well today? Is that to blame for the disparities that we see between white groups and black groups? That has been a big debate that we have obviously engaged in many times on this podcast. And then the other debate is, okay, well, what do we do about it? Like, is it possible? What is racial reconciliation? How do we reconcile one group with one

melanin count with another group of another melanin count? Are these kind of like monolithic groups based on skin color? And what does that actually look like? And so there have been a lot of Christians who have said, well, the gospel is sufficient for that. Like, if you have hate in your heart, the gospel is sufficient to take care of that because we agree that racism is wrong. The Bible says in first John that you cannot love God and hate your brother. So for any reason, whether it's because of his race or nationality or because of his ability or disability, because of his socioeconomic status, you cannot hate God and love your brother. So, or you cannot love God and hate your brother, rather. And so we believe in repenting of that. We believe in writing that wrong, absolutely. But our, our belief is that only the

gospel can do that, that only the gospel, only God, only the Holy Spirit can change your heart. And we actually believe that critical race theory, that Black Lives Matter, is not aiding and abetting any sort of real civil rights movement, but is actually hindering any sort of gospel-centered progress that we could have as a church because it takes on secular anti-God ideologies in order to accomplish goals that we don't think are either realistic or just. Their definition of justice doesn't align with God's definition of justice. And so that is kind of the debate. And what you'll hear from the other side. So one side says, look, the gospel is the only thing that can make racism go away. The gospel is the only thing that can reconcile two people together. Ephesians 2 tells us

that when it's talking about the Gentiles and Jewish people, how the cross, it tore down that dividing wall of hostility. And so if the cross can tear down the dividing wall of hostility between Gentiles and Jews who come together through the gospel, then certainly it has the power to tear down the dividing wall of hostility between two races that both share the name of Christ. but you will hear more social justice-minded Christians say, well, you say the gospel is enough when it comes to racism, but why isn't the gospel enough when it comes to abortion? And so they see this as a kind of hypocrisy or an excuse for apathy. And what I would say to that then is that it is yes and no. So the gospel is sufficient to change hearts, but we do. We do believe that something actually has to be done to write wrongs and to fix injustice. And we know that Micah 6-8 tells us to seek justice to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. Matthew 2540 says, and the king will answer them. Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these of least of these my brothers,

you did it to me. And so obviously we know that the gospel compels us to action. The gospel compels us to do something. The gospel compels us to love justice, to seek justice, to enact justice, to alleviate the oppression of the oppressed. And so that's absolutely true. And we see that really well when we see the anti-abortion movement within Christianity, how we don't just, you know, stand outside of abortion clinics and pray and plead with women who are about to have their child killed. But there are pro-life clinics that are run by Christians across the country that don't just help

women keep their baby. They don't just provide ultrasounds and pregnancy tests and prenatal vitamins, which is all very important. But they also provide everything that this woman and her child needs for afterbirth as well. This whole idea that pro-lifers are just pro-birth is such a myth. I mean, provide them with immigration help, provide them with refuge if they're in an abusive situation, provide them with financial help, provide them with Medicare help, provide them with parenting classes, with different forms of education, with free baby supplies. I mean, these Christian pro-life pregnancy centers do everything for these expecting moms to love them in a way that is both tangible and in a way that is spiritual. So obviously, we believe that when it comes to abortion, that there is some action behind it.

And so it is a good question to say, well, then why don't we say the gospel is sufficient for that and just let it be? but we do say that for something like racism or systemic racism. And it goes back to some of those debatable questions. The question is, like, to what extent does the racism, systemic racism, institutional racism that has existed historically in this country, historically in some parts of the evangelical church, to what extent does it actually affect and oppress people today? And to have that conversation, like, you have to be able to look at data. Like you have to be able to look at history.

You have to be able to look at some kind of empirical evidence as well as people's experiences, as well as people's stories and testimonies. But I think the most important thing is that when we are looking to solutions, when we are looking to ways to actually reconcile, we have to look to the Bible's definition of what justice looks like. This is the big problem. It's not that I don't believe that we should do nothing about race. racism where it actually exists. My problem is, within that conversation, there's a lack of

specificity. And there are a lack of biblical solutions when it comes to that conversation. And there's also a lack of truth. Like we've talked about the false narrative surrounding racialized police brutality surrounding some of the arguments that we hear today for why the black family has deteriorated since the 1960s. Everything is tied back to this view of the legacy of slavery and that just doesn't hold up against history. Like we've talked about that kind of step before. So I think that's part of the problem is that there's a lot of, there are false narratives surrounding this conversation, both within the church and outside of the church. And then the solutions that are offered in the way of actual justice are not biblical

solutions. Critical race theory, which asserts that if you are white, you're on the side of the oppressor, if you're black, you're on the side of the oppressed. And that intersectionality categorizes you this way, assigning you a certain oppression point based on your immutable characteristics and certain kinds of identity, that kind of mentality skews our idea of what justice and what reconciliation actually look like. And that manifests itself in the church as preaching a gospel of repentance for racism to all white people and preaching. And preaching a much gentler, a much softer and incomplete gospel and enabling gospel to people who are not white. That is a kind of partiality that God speaks against time and again, especially in the

book of James, in the Bible. And so we're seeing, I think, within the church, trying to make up for past partiality with current partiality against white people, preaching a different gospel to white people than you preach to black people, taking on secular solutions to spiritual problems. And So I understand that, yes, seeking justice, loving mercy does mean that the gospel compels us to action. But the question is, what are the actual problems today and what are the actual biblical solutions? Remember, justice according to God is impartial. It's impartial. It is direct. It is truthful. It is proportional. Starting with truthful, you can look at Exodus 23-1-3 that says you shall not spread a false report. Leviticus 1915, you shall, if you want to look at impartiality, you shall not be partial

to the poor, nor defer to the great, but in righteousness, you shall judge your neighbor. Deuteronomy 19, 15 through 21 speaks to God's concern with truth, impartiality, proportionality, and directness. Acts 1034, Peter is preaching the gospel to Gentiles and say and says that God shows no partiality. James two talks about the sin of partiality. And so we see throughout scripture that God's definition of what is right and what is wrong, God's definition of justice is marked by impartiality. And I think what we're seeing today is a different treatment of white people and non-white people in the hope that this is going to lead us to equity and reconciliation. And that is the beef. Like that's the big beef between

Christians, not whether or not racism exists, not even whether or not the gospel is sufficient, but whether or not the Bible speaks clearly enough to this issue or whether we need to be adopting definitions of social justice from Black Lives Matter. So I think that this conversation gets very muddled, but I hope that I offered some clarity on what is actually being disagreed upon when one side says that the gospel is sufficient, because it is true. 2. Peter 1.3 says his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence. And so again, that's not an excuse for apathy or for complacency or for not doing something. But we need to ask

ourselves, what are the real problems before us? And what is the truth behind these narratives that are being pushed about systemic racism, for example, or about police brutality? What does the data say? what does the truth say? What does history actually say? What are the different perspectives on this? We can look at those things while still being compassionate and listening to people's stories and experiences. And then how does the gospel, how does scripture inform us to actually write real legitimate wrongs? And let's be extremely specific and scriptural in how we do that. So this is another question. I think it's really interesting. Difference between healthy boundaries and cancel culture. So boundaries.

So boundaries is a word that we're hearing a lot about in the self and the self care, self-love world right now. And I do think it's important to have certain healthy boundaries in your life. I do think that that can turn into this kind of narcissistic mentality of claiming everyone who doesn't serve you perfectly in that moment is toxic. But of course, we believe in boundaries and friendships. We believe in boundaries and relationships before marriage. there are some relationships and situations, work-life balance is another example of boundaries. But boundaries should never be used as an excuse for narcissism, an excuse for selfishness, an excuse to put off thinking of other people or elevating the interest of other people above

your own, because that's exactly what Fulteans tells us to do, is to look also to the interest of other people, to consider other people as more important than ourselves. And so while I do think it's important to have boundaries in certain ways and certain contexts, we also have to just be really honest with ourselves and make sure that we're not using that term boundaries as an excuse to, you know, call everything that we don't like in that moment or everything that inconveniences us or burdens us in any way toxic. Now, the difference between healthy boundaries and cancel culture, I think we totally have the ability to choose who we want to support, choose what we want to buy for.

from. I don't think that you have to follow someone who doesn't align with your values. You don't have to buy their product. If they say something that you don't like or that you don't believe, and you can absolutely unfollow them, you can absolutely stop supporting them. And I don't think that's cancel culture at all. That's voting with your dollar in a sense. That is deciding where you want to spend your money. That is absolutely a product of living in a free society. And I think that that's fine. Where it turns into cancel culture is when you decide that you're going to orchestrate a campaign against this person or a campaign against their advertisers because they said something that you don't like. Or you're going to try to swarm their Yelp page with negative comments.

Or you're going to try to stick to the mob on their comment section on their Instagram. Or you're going to try in any way to destroy their lives or to destroy their livelihood. I think that there's a difference in doing this, by the way, orchestrating these kinds of malicious targeted campaigns against an individual or a small business and trying to pressure like a major million billion dollar company like Netflix to take off content that you see is inappropriate. So I think there's also a distinction between people like raising, um, raising heck about the gross cuties movie and cancel culture. You're not trying to ruin anyone's life. You're not trying to, um,

You're not trying to enact a vengeance in any way against someone. You are just expressing your dismay and you are trying to influence a company in a particular way. You're not actually trying to cancel anything or anyone in particular. You're not trying to ruin anyone's life. Cancel culture is digging up something from someone's past, trying to hold them to a standard because of a mistake, that you don't hold yourself to or double standards based on that person's politics, or you are trying to have them canceled or have their life ruined because of their religious views or because of their political views.

And again, this is not just not supporting them anymore. This is trying to hurt them, trying to destroy them either financially or physically in some way, get them fired. Like that is a form of vindictive cancel culture that we've unfortunately seen in all kinds of totalitarian societies for the past 100 years. And it's from Satan. Like it is from the pit of hell. And it's not something that Christians should be a part of.

Again, that doesn't mean that we cannot not support someone that we don't align with. But yeah, I unfollow people. I am follow bloggers. I am follow influencers. I try to not shop certain places. because I don't want to, I don't want to support them.

I don't want to give my money there. But I'm not trying to ruin their lives. I'm not trying to say that they shouldn't have a right to say what they want to say or believe what they want to believe. I'm not trying to get them canceled in any way. And so I think there's a really big difference. And when people say that there's not a big difference, they're typically just trying to gaslight you.

Like they're trying to make the conversation more confusing than it actually is so that you will say, okay, well, maybe a cancel culture is fine. like maybe being scared to speak up about my conservative or Christian views. Maybe that's not cancel culture. Maybe it's fine. People on the left do not fear for the most part saying their views. Like there is nothing off limits mostly for the left that will get you canceled by the left. Like you can be a communist.

You can be the most sexually depraved, deviant person in the world. Like you can be as far left as in love with Stalin as you possibly want to be. And you're not going to be canceled by the left. you're going to be fine. Or you can have enough, like, anti-racist or social justice street creds like Joe Biden or like Ibrax Kendi, where if you say something that's potentially problematic, you're not going to be canceled or raked over the coals for it because you're too useful to that side. So when Ibramex Kendi said that he was terrified when his daughter came home and said that

she wants to be a boy and that he realized that maybe they had made a mistake and not, you know, know, elevating the goodness of being a girl enough. He's not going to be canceled for that because he's zebra-mex-kindi. Joe Biden can say all of the racist stuff in the world for the past 20-plus, 50 years of his life, and he can have all of the gaffs, and it's not going to matter because he is useful to the left. So those double standards also speak to a cancel culture that I'm not saying doesn't exist ever at all on the right, but it is being dominated by people on the left, to very much believe that they are the tolerant ones, even though they are some of the most intolerant people in the world. Let's see. I'll do one more. Okay, so this is a question that I get a lot.

How do we deal with this assertion that being overweight or being obese is actually healthy? And I always want to be super sensitive about this because to be perfectly honest, like, I think that a lot of the body positivity movement is really good. I actually think that it's very healthy. I think that for a very long time, we have had unrealistic standards of what it means to be a woman. And I'm not sure if that's been forever in the history of advertising and media, but certainly for the past, I don't know, 50 or so years, there have been ever changing and at times unrealistic and double standards. for women when it comes to representation of how we should look. And I do think it can be very damaging for self-esteem, especially when it comes to social media. Like the age of kids on social media is getting younger and younger. And the things that they see and the examples that they are told to look to

are still very unhealthy. I think that it's great when a fitness company has someone modeling their clothes that has cellulite. Like I think it's great to have models that aren't perfectly thin that don't have all of the just, quote, right proportions that have just like normal bodies. Because the truth is, you don't have to be a size two to be beautiful. You don't have to be a size too to be healthy. Like, you don't necessarily have to look a certain way in order to, in order to show that you take care of your body. There are people who work out every day and eat really healthy and are never going to be a size two. They're never going to have, you know, stick skinny thighs or they're never going to have super toned arms. That's just how God made their

bodies. And I do think it's okay to have better representation. I think it's great to have better representation of reality when it comes to that sort of thing on social media and in advertising. Now, we as a society have the propensity to over correct. Like progressivism, even if you just wanted to see it in the most charitable terms, or if you wanted to see it that way, then you would just call it the ideology of overcorrection. And I do think progressivism is an important compliment conservatism. I don't, I think when it dominates, it becomes very absurd and cruel. But it can't be a good compliment to conservatism because it can question things that actually need to be questioned. The problem with progressivism is that it questions things it doesn't need to be questioned.

And it pulls it in the opposite direction in an effort to correct. And it never actually knows where it's going. And then it ends up just ruining the thing that it tried to correct. and then we just swing back to the other direction. And I'm afraid that is what is going to happen with this body positivity movement. It's like we can never just swing the pendulum into like a healthy middle spot. We always have to swing at the other direction. And I think we're seeing that with like covers of magazines and with different spreads in magazines and different pictures on social media saying that being obese is totally healthy.

and being obese is fine. It's something that doesn't have any indication of how healthy someone is. And that's just not true. Like that's just the denial of science. Like I said, of course it's true that you may not be a size two and you could be amazingly healthy. You could be way more healthy in the person who is a size two. But of course, we know that when you get to a certain weight that your chances of heart disease go up, your chances of diabetes go up, your chances of all companies. kinds of fatal illnesses go up when you get to an unhealthy weight. And so if we believe that our bodies, as Christians, we don't believe that our bodies belong to us, but they belong to God and that our body is a temple, a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit, as First Corinthians 619 says, then we do feel that we have a responsibility to treat our bodies well, to treat our bodies with respect. And again, I think that there is a balance there. I don't think that that means that

you never eat ice cream or that you never indulge yourself in any way. These are wonderful gifts of calming grace. If I believed that as a Christian, I couldn't eat ice cream. Oh, that would be very, very sad, especially during pregnancy. But I think that there's a balance there that we treat our bodies with discipline. We treat our bodies with respect. But we also realize that we don't idolize our bodies. We try to be as scientific as we possibly can when it comes to dieting and things like that. And we don't overcoract going to a place that is just fantasy that says that you can gain any amount of weight and you're still going to be just as healthy as if you weren't obese. That's just not true. That's not how God made us. That doesn't mean that people who are obese are not beautiful

or that they're not valuable or that they're not made in the image of God or that they're any worse than me or you. That's not saying that at all. That's just saying that God designed our bodies to function a certain way and that we have to be as balanced and as healthy and how we look at our bodies and how we treat our bodies as possible. So that's my nuanced view, if you will. All right, that's all I've got time for today. We will be back here soon.