If Type 2 Diabetes has not become an epidemic in this country, I would be surprised. Our poor diets, full of processed food, excess fat and sugar may very well be killing us. It is actually possible to undo the effects of that disease with a little care and self-control. My own mother managed to do that, in fact.
Then there is Type 1 Diabetes, a far more serious problem. I'm told that it has three stages, the final being the one that requires daily insulin injections. Before insulin, diabetes was a death sentence possibly within months and seldom more than a year away. It was treated with an extremely low carb diet, sometimes leading to literal starvation.
However, after years of research, Frederic Banting and Charles Best, working in the laboratory of John MacLeod, developed insulin. On January 11, 1922, fourteen year old Leonard Thompson, a patient at Toronto General Hospital, drifting in and out of a diabetic coma, became the first patient to receive an insulin injection. After the second within 24 hours, he had improved dramatically, and his blood glucose levels had dropped. He went on to live thirteen more years, dying at 27, not of diabetes, but pneumonia. Banting and MacLeod received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1923.
While Type 1 is an autoimmune disease, Type 2 is a metabolic disorder. Although genetics can impact it, lifestyle is more the determining factor—diet and exercise—too many simple carbohydrates and not enough activity.
The same thing can affect us spiritually—too much "smooth" (easy to eat and digest) teaching, and not enough exercise. The Israelites were condemned for complaining to the prophets God sent, …Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceitsIsa30:10. The Christians the Hebrews writer addressed were condemned for their lack of "exercise." For when by reason of the time you ought to be teachers, you have need again that someone teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of solid food…But solid food is for fullgrown men, [even] those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil Heb5:14.
When you hear complaints like, "This Bible class is too hard," or, "too much work," "The preacher stepped on my toes," or "He wasn't uplifting," then a case of spiritual diabetes is soon to follow. A dear friend of mine once told me, "I want to be challenged to do better, not patted on the head like a child and told I'm just fine the way I am." Seems like Jesus thought that way too when, "loving" the rich young ruler, he told him, "One thing you lack" Mark 10:21.
Too many carbs in your spiritual diet will give you a deadly case of spiritual diabetes. Too many sit on pews in a diabetic coma, coming around only when the praise band gets loud enough. Maybe it's time for a shot of spiritual insulin.
And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who when they were come thither went into the synagogue of the Jews. Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of the mind, examining the Scriptures daily, whether these things were soActs17:11,11.
Dene Ward
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