Since the year dot humans have been on a quest for beauty, longevity. It all started with those ancient Greeks (again!) As an aside, the enemy was on fire during that time. Not that God wasn’t, He just let the enemy think he had the upper hand because the enemy doesn’t, didn’t and can never understand one thing – love!

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the desire for longevity, God put it there!

“He has also set eternity in the human heart.”

Ecclesiastes 3:11

And because of the way are our minds are wired, like attracts like. There’s nothing wrong with that either, until it’s twisted, distorted, taken to an extreme. Who do you suppose instigated the twisting? Yep, the enemy.

Satan can’t create anything. His only play is lies, manipulation, so he took what was meant as a gift, a beautiful way to move through the world, and distorted it.

And there we have the roots of “diet culture” as we know it today. It’s changed over the ages, moved with the times to help it fit in with the thinking of the age, but always behind the scenes we have the same master manipulator, spreading his lies and half truths.

Healthy is not the enemy. Looking after, respecting, being kind to the vehicle you were given to move through life is not a problem.

But “health” is diverse because God is a diverse Creator – just look at the variety of wild flowers!

And you and me, made in God’s image, we have this same creativity. That’s why there are so many different cars. Each car is basically the same but if I try and drive my little yellow Skoda like a F1 racing car, I’m going to run into problems and fast!

The enemy took “eternity in the human heart” and “like attracts like” and distorted them into a message that says every body must be a prescribed shape, size and colour in order to be “healthy”, “beautiful” and “correct”. This is simply not true!

But the enemy didn’t stop there. He stepped it up a gear by fuelling the human thirst for knowledge and discovery, manipulating our quest for answers.

Combine that with our minds built in desire to prove itself right and we find ourself facing scientific research that seeks only to prove how terribly unhealthy and life-debilitating it is to have a body that looks “different”, diverse.

And then he added fuel to the fire by yet again tapping into our God-given desire to live forever, our quest to want to make a difference. This combined with the current age’s reverence of science, head over heart, because yes our minds are brilliant but so are our hearts. It’s not either/or!

But did you know that from the enemy’s perspective this isn’t about making human’s miserable? That’s simply a glorious bi-product!

The real jewel in the enemy’s crown is keeping us so focussed on these external things – counting calories, calculating macros, eating clean, reading labels, avoiding “junk” – that we have no time, energy or enthusiasm left for the real zest of life – relationship, purpose, the things you were created for!

Diet culture is a society-wide sleeping pill to stop you and me ever getting to the stuff we were born for!

Life is finite. We move through today bound by time. The hours we spend on meal prep are hours that we will never see again. Instead of trusting that our Creator knew what He was doing when He hand-crafted us, we pour all our resources into fighting against who we were made to be!

And because everyone’s doing it, any attempt to buck the trend is reviled and instead, we are celebrated every time we buy into the enemy’s lies.

How many times have you said, “I’ve been good today” when you “ate pretty”? (No judgement friend. I’ve done it too!) Here’s the truth … our morality is not dictated by what we put in our mouthes.

What comes out of your mouth is far more important than what you put in it!

God said that everything He created is “good” and yes, some of these things have been distorted by more lies, but everything is built from the core of God’s creation so what if we instead simply embraced each day with Him? The whisper I hear is that that would be enough.

You are God’s work of art, He knew what He was doing when He made you – and He doesn’t make junk!

Ready to ditch diet culture and instead embrace the work of art God created you to be? Join our first ever Itchy Soul Playground one-day event: Youier By Design.