Spiritual gym rats

 This week's verses are Colossians 2:20-23:

If you have died with Christ to the elemental spirits of the world, why do you submit to them as though you lived in the world? “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” These are all destined to perish with use, founded as they are on human commands and teachings. Even though they have the appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship and humility achieved by an unsparing treatment of the body—a wisdom with no true value—they in reality result in fleshly indulgence.

  The Apostle Paul is talking about a kind of bondage we can fall into as we try to discipline ourselves. We can become slaves of self-rule for the sake of self-rule. We think we're doing something useful but we're actually just fooling ourselves.

Do not handle

Do not taste

Do not touch

Do those ring any bells? We often set boundaries for ourselves, but sometimes the boundaries themselves become a kind of indulgence of their own.

Exercise is good, right? It's healthy to swim, hike, work out, play a little sports, and so on. But we can take it too far and become obsessed with our level of fitness. When does it stop becoming healthy and start becoming self-imposed worship? Where is the line drawn between the person who does some core exercises to stay healthy and the person who spends hours every week at the gym looking at themselves in mirrors and bragging about their workouts?

We might say that the line falls somewhere around the point where bragging starts to appear, even if you're just bragging to yourself. We could also use dieting as an example. It's healthy to eat more vegetables, but if you have reached a point where a person's goodness in your eyes depends on whether they eat as many vegetables as you, or whether they abstain entirely from meat or not, you have probably crossed the line from healthy behavior to self-imposed worship.

For a person who prides themselves in how well they recycle or how small their carbon footprint is or whatever regime they have imposed on themselves, the danger is that they will eventually stop doing it for the good it does for them and do it instead for how good they feel it makes them. If you were to live 100% sustainably, what good is that if you look down your nose at your fellow Christians who still use the occasional plastic bag? Or if you're up at 0500 every day to go work out, what good is that to you if you start feeling superior to your chubby neighbors who sleep in till 9am on weekends?

And that's not even getting into the effect it has on our perception of our place in relation to God. If you're feeling pretty good about yourself for abstaining from processed food, and you're starting to feel like you've got a pretty good routine going, how much do you really feel like you need the grace of God? I mean, once he gets a look at how consistent you've been in your diet, is he really going to feel like the cross is necessary? Maybe he'll ask you for some tips on how not to eat so much fish, or maybe learn to turn water into a more family-friendly beverage in the future? It's a dangerous place to be.

It's one thing to abstain from alcohol, for instance, because there's a history of alcoholism in your family or because it's better for your health. It's quite another to do so because you feel it makes you a better person, maybe even a better person than those who don't abstain. At that point, you're exalting yourself over other people and taking refuge in a source of righteousness that does not originate at the cross.

So there are plenty of good noble things we can do to improve our lives and put some distance between ourselves and sin's opportunity. The thing we want to avoid is becoming "spiritual gym rats" whose whole existence is defined by the size of their biceps and their pride in having them. It's useful from time to time to ask ourselves "Who am I doing this for? And how will I know when it is time to stop?"

Rules make us feel safe. They make us feel like we know what we're doing, like we have some control over things. But if we rely on them for something more than structure, if they become something we look to as a source of righteousness and value, they can be worse than useless. Live a healthy life. Set healthy boundaries. But don't use it as a substitute for religion.