The Bible has a lot to say about food - fish, bread, red wine, wedding feasts, great banquets - but I had to think for a long time to recall references to exercise.
It's that time of year when our TV schedules are about to challenge us as to what sort of couch potatoes we are? Watching people making bread and cakes or getting strictly exercised on the dance floor?
Sit and sponsor Emma as she gets running? Or be encouraged to run too?
Take our places at the roadside as the lycra-fit guys on bikes come through? Or take up our cycles and stretch our legs?
Regular listeners to this spot may have heard me a lot but never seen me. I am of slender build although pretty fit for a man of my age. I had the blessing of not putting on weight in my early and middle years. One friend told me I wouldn't get fat if I ate a greased pig. Another that I only wore clothes so people could see me. Well with friends like that...
In his wonderful book Sapiens (A Brief History of Humankind) Yuval Noah Harari says:
'Consumerism has worked very hard ... to convince people that indulgence is good for you, whereas frugality is self-oppression.'
He has a point. Al Murray's pub landlord is fond of saying that people who think they have slow metabolism actually have a fast pie-arm.
In fact the biblical material about exercise is indirect, but blunt. Look after your body. Treat it like a temple says St Paul. That way, say I, you'll, maybe, give your friends and family the gift of living with them longer.
1 comment:
Hi Steve
Your piece starts at 2:12:45 on the replay. https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/play/p06gsn6m
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