Does God Care About Our Eating Habits or Body Weight?

True to the fulfillment of Bible prophecies, including the Lord Jesus’ predictions about the last days, we are living in crazy times. Crazy, as in people are coming up with all types of insane excuses to justify all kinds of bad and/or sinful behaviors so as to avoid changing unhealthy or evil habits. Among the craziness is the idea that it’s wrong to say anything to encourage people not to be overweight or obese when there are concerns about their health. Even if you have the science to prove overeating and lack of exercise that leads to too much weight is unhealthy and you present it lovingly, you can be labeled a hateful fat shamer, fatphobic, body shamer or racist.

Does God care anything at all about our eating habits, body weight, or health? Before tackling that question, I must address the underlying or implied question behind it. Namely, does God love people even if they’re overweight or obese? I believe the Lord makes it clear from his word that Jesus Christ died for everyone’s sins, regardless of their body type. That means he loves everyone and a person’s body type doesn’t affect his love for anyone. This unconditional love he has for all of us is the same love that motivates him to show concern for the state of our well-being, whether mental, physical, or spiritual.

There are many passages in scripture where God demonstrates that he cares about our eating habits, body weight, and health as a whole. The New Testament makes it crystal clear that we are no longer bound by Old Testament dietary laws prohibiting the consumption of certain animals (Romans 14, 1 Timothy 4:4). On the other hand, the Lord is concerned about the manner and intent behind our consumption of food or drink, in keeping with his interest in the health of our whole person–mental, physical, and spiritual. This is why Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 said it was fine for Christians to eat food with pagans in an environment of spiritual neutrality, but to reject the food if the host explicitly dedicates it to a false god (1 Corinthians 10: 25-31). So in verse 31 of that chapter, Paul teaches, “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God,” speaking to the manner and intent of our eating and drinking.

Old Testament dietary laws may not apply to us, but there are still principles from the Old Testament about health, body weight, and food and drink that can still help our understanding to benefit our health for God’s glory. For instance, there are these passages establishing the principle of avoiding fatty foods:

It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood. Leviticus 3:17

Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, Ye shall eat no manner of fat, of ox, or of sheep, or of goat. And the fat of the beast that dieth of itself, and the fat of that which is torn with beasts, may be used in any other use: but ye shall in no wise eat of it. Leviticus 7:23-24

The Bible was spot on about harmful fatty foods centuries before human science caught on. When it comes to obesity, the scriptures in the Old Testament imply that those who overeat and get fat are unhealthy and acting outside of God’s will, according to these passages:

For when I shall have brought them into the land which I sware unto their fathers, that floweth with milk and honey; and they shall have eaten and filled themselves, and waxen fat; then will they turn unto other gods, and serve them, and provoke me, and break my covenant. Deuteronomy 31:20

But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. Deuteronomy 32:15

¹⁵ But when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised them up a deliverer, Ehud the son of Gera, a Benjamite, a man lefthanded: and by him the children of Israel sent a present unto Eglon the king of Moab. …¹⁷ And he brought the present unto Eglon king of Moab: and Eglon was a very fat man. Judges 3

And it came to pass, when he [the messenger] made mention of the ark of God, that he [Eli] fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy. And he had judged Israel forty years. 1 Samuel 4:18

¹⁸ If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother … ²⁰ [] they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. ²¹ And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: Deuteronomy 21

Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters… Ezekiel 16:49

These themes carryover into the New Testament with the underlying concept of shunning laziness that often accompanies weight problems. Since Christians possess the fruit of the spirit, including temperance or self-control (the ability to keep one’s fleshly desires in check), this means Christians can learn and put into practice ways to avoid being overweight or obese. Paul also spoke against gluttonous behavior when he spoke by the Holy Ghost in Philippians 3:

¹⁸ (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: ¹⁹ Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)

To further the ideas of temperance and preserving one’s health as well as linking physical, mental, and spiritual health together, the New Testament promotes the idea of fasting for God’s people, which is the opposite of overeating. There are various forms of fasting and human science today has caught up with what the Bible has been teaching for centuries about the benefits of fasting. Our Lord Jesus Christ prophesied that his people would be a people set aside for holy fasting when he said:

But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days. Luke 5:35

In conclusion, toward the end of the New Testament, the Lord spoke through his apostle John to inform us about how much he cares about our health in every aspect–an all-encompassing statement that would include our eating habits, body weight, and health:

Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. 3 John 2