The Scripture's Secret to Weight Loss

I am overweight. That is due, in part, to my sin. It is something I repent of and struggle with.

That being said, it is good to know that Christians have finally really discovered that there is money to be made in the diet book/program industry. In the seventies and eighties, when the great wave of diet hit the rest of the world, Christians were discovering that there had been a war in Korea. With consistent timing, Christians, today, are flooding the market with Christian diet books.

I occasionally flip through the channels to see what the t.v. preachers are up to, and a few weeks ago, I was stopped in my flipping by a "prophetess" who was "revealing" Jesus' Success Secrets for Perfect Weight. They were only hinted at and hyped by "actual" customers who had tried Jesus' method and experience dramatic and permanent weight loss. To know the secrets in depth, one had to send in some amount of money.

I was so relieved to know that Jesus hid a diet plan in the New Testament, that I almost placed an order for the product. But then, she is not the only one to claim that she has discovered the secret diet plan hidden in the Bible.

Books actually, currently available (but with the titles changed to protect the gullible):

Fasting: a Biblical Diet Plan with Recipes -- this author explains that fasting in the Bible has been misunderstood: it is not actually or primarily a discipline associated with prayer, it is a weight loss plan!

How Would Jesus Dine? -- this book shockingly reveals that Jesus ate a Mediterranean diet which rarely included processed foods and mysterious chemicals.

Sweating with the Spirit -- explains that the charismatic gifts were actually given to the apostles to slim them down.

The Maker's Meal -- unlike most of the others, this author looked to the Old Testament and found that there is a secret set of dietary laws in a section of the Bible that no one reads any more.

Making Your Body God -- a trainer wrote this book using the sacrifices of bulls to show that a high meat protein diet with weight-lifting is the most spiritual diet.

I Love to Eat; I Hate Myself -- has less to do with actual recipes than it does with the recognition that "until you believe that you deserve to be thin, the Holy Spirit will not make you thin," but as soon as the reader has come to that realization, the Holy Spirit shuttles fat out of the reader's colon.

There are more, but I only want to mention one other -- one that Christians seem to ignore since it is promoted both by a cult and an animal rights organization. These two base their diet on Genesis 1:30b, "I have given you every green plant for food." It is a vegetarian/vegan diet. They argue, for example, that when Jesus ate fish with the disciples, it is a mistranslation -- it should read that He ate seaweed with them. Since the diet given in the Garden included no animal products and God said killing is wrong, they argue, the biblical diet is plants.

And, in typical ministerial fashion: one more -- one I have not heard mentioned, or seen a book written about, Matthew 3:4b, "[John the Baptist's] food was locusts and wild honey."