By Andrea Johnson
Flipping through television channels one night, I caught an episode of My 600-lb Life, a show about morbidly obese people (not due to medical conditions) who have come to the realization that if they don’t lose weight, they will die. My curiosity was piqued. How can someone afford that much food, and who has time to cook all that food?
It took very little time to see that a 600-pound person usually cannot buy their own food. They can’t work. They can barely move. In these cases a “loved one” is purchasing the food and bringing it to them. A loved one is providing the food that is killing them.
As with any addiction, the morbidly obese person’s life centers around their addiction. They are enslaved to food. There are a host of reasons for addiction, but I can’t help but wonder what is going on in the lives of these family members that they would help their loved ones kill themselves.
In Lisa’s article this month about her brother’s transition to become a woman, she echoes my sentiments. “What troubles me even more than my brother’s decline in mental health,” she said, “is that countless people around him have decided to simply ‘love and support’ him on this ‘journey.’”
Lisa’s brother – a son, husband, father of five – receives lots of “likes” on social media. His wife is even helping him transition into a woman. She took him to buy makeup and wigs, as if it’s the hair and makeup that makes a woman! (Ladies, we’ve come a long way, or have we?)
My children used to come in from playing outdoors pretending they were wild animals. Although this was a perfectly acceptable playtime fantasy, when it was time for lunch I made them eat with silverware from a plate at the table. I didn’t dress them for school in bear costumes; I didn’t indulge their fantasies.
As in the case of those suffering from morbid obesity, we don’t help someone break free from their addiction if we do not confront them, or if worse yet, we enable them. Lisa’s brother is not getting the help he needs.
Romans 6:16 (NASB) says, “You are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness.” Later in that same chapter Paul reminds us, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Jesus came to “proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners” (Isaiah 61:1). He did not give His life on the cross just so we and our loved ones could slip into eternity hopelessly enslaved to sin. That is not the “good news” we are called to preach.
