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Celiac and the Cost of Cheating

Posted: June 11th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Celiac, Faith | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

I thought I would pause in my series on the Didache to reflect on this video by Dr. Vikki Petersen that I think relates to what I tried to express yesterday. In it she is answering a question from a woman who suffered severe weight loss as a result of celiac. (From what I’ve read, weight loss is a symptom to one degree or another in roughly two-thirds of those with the disease. The other third tends to experience weight gain.) She spends a good deal of time discussing healthy food that will help the celiac heal. Toward the end of the video, however, Dr. Petersen discusses the consequences of “cheating” on the gluten free diet for the celiac.

As she notes, sometimes and for some people the consequences are obvious and clearly directly related to consuming gluten. For others, however, the consequences are less obvious and the linkage between what they ate and what happens to their body is not as clear. Yet in both cases the ultimate price is the same.

Is that not how it is with the two ways? Sometimes the consequences when we choose the way of death are clearly visible and obvious to ourselves and to others. But often they are not as clearly related or as obvious. What price do we pay when we choose to inhabit our pride, for example? Unless we take it to such an extreme that we alienate those we encounter, probably little that is immediately visible or obvious. We might even look praiseworthy to others and to ourselves. And yet we are living and breathing within the way of death as we do so. We are shaping ourselves into distorted beings unable to stand in the unveiled light of God.

God gives himself to us. Jesus has healed the human nature and made it capable of true union with God. The Spirit inhabits our bodies transforming them and limited only when and to the extent we set our will against his work. We must learn to worship God, to take his reality into our bodies, to submit our will freely and allow his substance to work within us — individually and corporately.

There a two ways, a way of life and a way of death, and a great difference between the two.

So with celiac. So with the whole of life.


2 Comments on “Celiac and the Cost of Cheating”

  1. 1 Julie in Milwaukee said at 11:22 am on June 11th, 2009:

    RT @tmorizot New blog post: Celiac and the Cost of Cheating http://bit.ly/1AKipQ

  2. 2 Julie in Milwaukee said at 4:22 pm on June 11th, 2009:

    RT @tmorizot New blog post: Celiac and the Cost of Cheating http://bit.ly/1AKipQ