We Are Not as Strong as We Think We Are

One of my favorite Sunday comic strips from my early adult years was Berkeley Breathed's Outland. Featuring Steve, Bill the Cat, Opus the penguin and others. One particular strip stands out in my mind. Steve, Bill, and Opus are sitting in their underwear on their outdoor couch (don't ask me – that's just what they did) drinking beer and eating Hostess Ding-Dongs. Steve is reading the newspaper and smoking a cigarette. The headline on the newspaper front says something about a meteor bouncing off Jupiter and heading for earth. No one on the couch seems to care.

But then a jogger runs up and starts talking about how he pities the “flabbos” on the couch. He boasts of worshiping at the altar of exercise, drinking soy milkshakes, sustaining a certain heart rate. He states to those on the couch that he will live twice as long as they will – guaranteed.

And at that exact moment, the jogger gets slammed into the earth by the headlined meteor. Yep, dead. Bill and Steve raise their beers and say, “Here's to no guarantees” while Opus offers them another Ding Dong.

Hysterical.

There's something about it that resonates with me. Or maybe it's just the absurdity of it all that resonates because I'm a bit off. But anywho, our culture certainly likes to think that we can extend our lives through the disciplines of exercise and eating clean food, meditating, and all the rest. There's something eerily akin to “worshiping at the altar of exercise” at play among us.

So I've had not a few thoughts over the years about God's sovereignty and our “free” will. If God has numbered our days before we ever took a breath, and if Jesus flat out told us that we weren't able to do as simple a thing as add a day to our lifespan through our anxious efforts, then why bother with any of it? After all, the apostle Paul said that physical exercise profits only a little, while spiritual “exercises” profit much. Besides, we've all known lifelong smokers still driving their cars and puffing their cigs at age 90 with seemingly no repercussions, while folks that do workouts all the time, are active, and in great shape drop suddenly dead of a heart attack.

And besides, I ain't getting any younger. My body reminds me of that all the time. But I have noted that there is a certain predictability about sitting around on me bum all day that makes me feel worse; but moving, eating well, sleeping well, and all the rest does make me feel better, does help me focus longer, does seemingly give me more energy.

How do you put it all together?

Recent Finnish studies of twins suggests that the relationship between physical activity and longevity is not as straightforward as was supposed. What does seem clear is that those who take better care of their physical health tend to have a better quality of life. They are happier, more energetic, more flexible, more engaged in life. And isn't our idea of living more than just amassing as many days as possible? What happens in those days, whom it happens with, and how able we are to do what we love to do are generally far better determinants of life satisfaction than simply living for a long time.

So perhaps it's as simple as God determining the number of our days and how they come to an end. And he lets us steward those days as we see fit. The amount of real living we do then comes down to a wondrous interplay between our choices and habits and the good will of God.

But yeah. This one won't make the scientific journals.