Tag: obesity

Delayed Gratification

Is it important to wait? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

4,000 pieces of gold.

That’s a hefty price for a young man playing a game, but in the world of Final Fantasy at the time, that was a lot. Gold pieces were the main currency then and at the area of the game you were in, most battles gave 100-200 pieces. You would have to stay at the inn at times to recover which would cost 100 pieces of gold.

However, if you wanted to get the silver sword then, you had to pay 4,000 pieces of gold. Only one person likely in your party could equip it. The next most expensive weapon costs 450 gold. Still, there were other expensive items. A bracelet you could equip costs 1,000 and level 3 spells cost 1,500 to learn and level 4 costs 4,000 to learn.

(By the way, I had to look up the prices of other items aside from spells, but silver sword stuck with me.)

If you wanted to get this sword, you had to work for it. This kind of thing is something called grinding. Why? Just think of how your going to work can be called the daily grind. Some people do it just to gain experience to level their character up. Either way, most people don’t really like grinding. It’s very repetitive.

By the way,  I haven’t even mentioned buying healing items and deals like that for what can essentially be the first dungeon the party goes through in the game.

However, if someone engages in this in many a game, they are prepared not only for the next dungeon, but also for several later dungeons. Those who rush through because they just want to get on with the story are more likely to suffer and in the end, have to do their own form of grinding still when they keep encountering an obstacle they can’t get past and grinding can be much harder later on in a game.

Okay. This is interesting, but what has this to do with Christianity and apologetics?

As I thought about it, it came to mind that this is a lesson in delayed gratification. Consider this. How many problems in our society come because we do not like to wait? We live in an instant society. Everything we want comes immediately. We can put something in a microwave or get something out of the freezer or drive where we want to go and with the internet, we have instant communication. Paul would love to do in the Roman Empire what we can do today.

In some ways, that can be fine, but in others, if we think we have to wait for something, then we will suffer in the end for it often.

Let’s start with money where this started. How many people are in debt today not because they had to buy an expensive item like a house or needed emergency surgery that was really expensive, but because of out of control credit card debt? How many people just buy items constantly and don’t really think about the price?

I considered that my early habits in gaming came to influence my early thinking with money. I learned the value of money there and to this day, I make it a point to have money in the bank and be light with my spending. Because of that, when I do want to splurge, I normally can without much difficulty.

Recently, a friend gave me a pass to the World War II Museum here in New Orleans. I only had to pay for parking. When I was done going through the museum, I got to the gift shop which had books. I bought a couple of them there. It cost me some naturally, but I was able to handle it. This also after having a month where I had to go to the doctor twice for a really bad sinus infection after the conference, the second being a follow-up, and I currently have no health insurance.

Still, I have money in the bank and my money in savings I haven’t even had to touch since moving to New Orleans. I pay my bills responsibly and I use plenty of programs to get free Amazon gift cards and to get deals when I do have to go out into town. My parents were always frugal with money, but I think my experience in gaming where I had to save up to buy things and make sure I always had enough taught me just as much.

Not only that, but I realize that some of my money comes from donors. Thus, I want to make sure I honor the money that is given on my behalf. If you want to become a supporter of me financially, which is greatly appreciated, then you can do so here.

This also works in other areas of our life. Our country has a problem with obesity and most of us are eating not because we are hungry, but because we are bored. We also don’t want to wait, and why should we? We can get fast food which normally isn’t good. I think we all have experienced the event of sitting on a couch or chair watching something or playing a game and just snacking while there. We don’t move much, we exercise little, and what do we have as a result? Obesity.

Finally, what about sex? Who wants to actually have to wait until you’re married? People who went to school with my parents and get divorced are now living together before marriage. In their day in school, that was definitely the exception. Today, it is the norm.

We live in a world of one-night stands and a hook-up culture and why? Because why should we have to wait? It’s just sex. Not a big deal. Right? We say this in an age of single parents, unplanned pregnancies, STDs, and ultimately a miasma of meaningless hanging around us. The sexual revolution has been a disaster.

However, the option left is waiting and we don’t like that. Why have to wait? If you want something, get it now.

Maybe we should return to what I learned so long ago in Final Fantasy. It was hard to work and work and wait before I went into the dungeon in making sure all my characters had the best equipment and spells, but you know what? When I did that, we did much better than everyone else and were more prepared not just for that dungeon, but for every other later dungeon. Also, if I needed to grind again to buy better items, I did it again.

Patience is a virtue we don’t really have today, but we definitely need it. How many of our problems in our society could be dealt with better if we would just learn to wait? How much of what we go through would we be better prepared for if we just waited?

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Breaking The Stronghold of Food.

What do I think of Michael and Nancy Brown’s book published by Siloam? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Let me be clear right at the start. I do not have this struggle. If it were possible to have all my meals in a pill form suddenly with some futuristic technology and still get all the nutrients and avoid hunger, I would have no problem with it. In my more literalist days, I could not get excited about the end of the age because people would talk about the Wedding Supper of the Lamb and I figured I’d just sit in a corner somewhere waiting until the meal was done. You can tell this looking at me. I weigh about 120 pounds and I’m a 5’7″ guy.

My diet, however, does not consist of a lot of junk. I do eat seafood and if I snack, I prefer things like granola bars and crackers and such. If we go out to eat, I would prefer to go to Smoothie King or Subway over a pizza place. I do have a fondness for something with peanut butter, but I do not have a food addiction at all. Why would I read this book then?

Because my wife does and I think part of being a good husband is understanding your wife.

Dr. Brown and his wife both struggled with a food addiction and they had to make a radical change. Dr. Brown writes about how this is also a spiritual struggle and for many people, yes, a sin struggle. It is mistreating the temple that one has been given and cutting their life short and robbing their loved ones of time with them for the sake of food. Dr. Brown is sympathetic in the book as is his wife, but he also just tells it like it is.

He’s also not preaching from Sinai. He tells about how he was one who struggled with this problem immensely. For him and his wife, much of what they did revolved around food. By removing the addiction to food, their whole lives became immensely better.

It wasn’t an easy struggle. Dr. Brown before he became a Christian was a heroin addict and once he gave his life to Christ, he went cold turkey entirely and is free. For him, giving up chocolates was harder than giving up heroin. He had to learn to change his palate radically and could not allow himself to cheat at all. Exercise was a part of it, but the biggest change was the change of diet.

Dr. Brown walks through how we tolerate often overeating, but we treat it differently from any other wrong. Who of us would say a little bit of pornography is no big deal? Who would say that a little bit of cheating on your wife is nothing major and hey, we all do it? Yet when it comes to food, we let all that fly out the window. Most of us don’t eat because we’re hungry, but because we want something else and we even have our bodies tricking us into thinking we’re hungry when we’re really not.

It also taught me that I need to be praying for my own wife in this. Granted for me, this is a challenge. I can spend a lot of time doing study and such, but prayer is hard since that’s a more relational act. Still, the idea was gripping and I hope that one day, my Princess will be free of the stronghold. I think she will be immensely healthier and happier and it will be better for the two of us.

Throughout the book, Nancy throws in her own helpful tips. One particular funny one is about how Dr. Brown saw an infomercial about another miracle weight loss product and was so excited. He really wanted to order it the next day and lose all their pounds. Nancy’s comment there begins by pointing out that this man actually has a Ph.D.! Yes. Sometimes Ph.D. can stand for phenomenally dumb. Even smart people, and Dr. Brown is certainly one, can fall for gimmicks like this. For him, there is no gimmick and the same goes for Nancy. There are no shortcuts on the way to success and there is no quarter with the enemy.

I do not struggle with this. Still, if you do or know someone who does, go through this book to open you up. I could read all about doughnuts and pizza and ice cream, which I can enjoy, and sleep peacefully not worried about temptation. (My wife says that the old adage of the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach would never have worked for me.) Dr. Brown’s book is less about diet and exercise I think than a look at the spiritual struggle with questions at the end of each chapter to make you think about the struggle more.

In Christ,
Nick Peters