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Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.--
Anthony Bourdain, New York chef, in "Kitchen Confidential" Reader's Digest December, 2000.

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The article is primarily about eating out in restaurants. He goes on to say

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Sure, it's a "you play you pay" sort of adventure, but you knew that already, every time you ordered a taco or a dirty-water hot dog. If you're willing to risk some slight lower gastrointestinal distress for one of those Italian sweet sausages at the street fair, or for a slice of pizza you know has been sitting on the board for an hour or two, why not take a chance on the good stuff?

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I never expected to see the attitude of millions of people in the Western nations so cleverly written. People are indeed treating their bodies as if they are amusement parks, not temples. The Bible has told us what people's attitudes will be.

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Isaiah 22:13 And behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine: let us eat and drink; for to morrow we shall die.

Philippians 3:19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.

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God tells us that our bodies are temples, that we have been bought with a price.

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1 Corinthians 6:19, 20 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.

1 Corinthians 10:31 Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.

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There are serious consequences for those who persist in treating their bodies like amusement parks after knowing what God says.

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Isaiah 66:17 They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the Lord.

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God has given His children a plan for healthful living. It starts by believing and treating our bodies as if they belong to God and are the temple where the Holy Spirit dwells.

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Even so come, Lord Jesus
Linda

[This message has been edited by Linda Sutton (edited November 14, 2000).]

There is a third category, I, for a long time, treated my body more a toxic dump.

Lack of training and then indulgence of appetite, has made me what I am today.
Overweight, sickly and very unhappy.
I wish I had learned better and then stuck to it at an earlier age.

Gerry,

Many of us have done it. We don't care for our bodies as we should when we are young, sometimes because we don't know better, sometimes because we don't care, sometimes because we live to eat, often a combination of these.

We need to remember that God forgives, and while we can't wipe out the years of abuse that we heaped on our bodies, we can change our habits and stop doing damage. God may not heal us of our self-inflicted infirmities, but He still gives grace and helps us bear with the problems.

I'm glad that He has also given us natural remedies that can help some of our distress. He loves us no matter what.

You know, when you think about it, the mistake that the chef makes is in believing (i.e. deceiving himself) that his body is an amusement park, when in reality it is the temple of God and he is really treating it as a toxic dump.

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Even so come, Lord Jesus
Linda