Hey everyone! It’s Dr. Keen here. Laura has been doing an incredible job of providing you with some faith-filled, whole food focused blog posts packed with knowledge these past few months. I have decided to give her a break in May as I update you with what God is doing in the big picture of Crossroads. This past month I was honored to speak twice on what I am calling “Biblical Wellness”. Biblical Wellness is a very broad term. I even Googled it and of course found hundreds of hits on topics that are related, but none seemed to fall in line with what Crossroads Family Chiropractic has been growing into over the past couple years.
For the next three weeks, I’ll take us all on a journey to discover what “Biblical Wellness” means. We are going to explore its definition, talk about how faith and science are not mutually exclusive, and look at practical ways to live it out every day with our families and community.
So let’s get started!
Have you ever thought about what health really is? Many people assume that health is the state of being free from illness or injury. However, the root of our English word “health” actually means “wholeness, sound or well”. The old Norse word for health means “holy and sacred”. Wow! Sacred?!?
The World Health Organization (WHO) builds on this idea by defining health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.
These definitions act as stepping stones to the popular word our culture has adopted in the last decade of “wellness”. Wellness is defined as “the state of being in good health, especially as an actively pursued goal.”
When I read what wellness really is, I was struck by how the active pursuit of wellness parallels my active pursuit of Christ. Being a Christian is not just a one time decision to accept that I mess up constantly and that Jesus, being the son of God, died for my sins and was raised from the dead. Yes, that is the fundamental starting point; however, we are called to actively participate each day to follow in Christ’s footsteps. We are challenged to live a life that is set apart, holy (Hebrews 10:10) and unlike our old self (Ephesians 4: 22-24). Once we accept that we were ransomed, we are called to live in a way that is worthy of this calling (Ephesians 4:1); to live as ones bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:20). “We are not our own, but belong to Christ” (Romans 8:9).
Following Christ is an action. Christianity calls us verse after verse to live out our faith as a verb, not a noun! Sometimes this makes pursuing Christ difficult, uncomfortable, and personally it has been hazy at times for me to know where to start this journey. And YET! The Bible holds many scriptures that provide a roadmap and address that fact that the use of our bodies as His temples is a part of our active sanctification and worship as followers of Christ.
This is Biblical Wellness: using holy scripture, as individuals and in community, to guide us in our pursuit of being whole emotionally, spiritually and physically.
For the next 3 weeks, I will be digging into scriptures that encourage us to use our bodies as vessels to worship our Creator while showing how science supports this Biblical framework of health. I hope you will join me.