For the past two issues The Index has focused on ways Georgia Baptists can improve their health by developing a better lifestyle. In short, the take-away was to eat food (meaning real food, not processed substitutes), not too much, and mostly plants.

We touched on the reality that a large part of the solution to the growing national healthcare debate should not be on finding ways to make pharmaceuticals more affordable but on teaching Americans to eat foods that are more healthy and to engage in more exercise. Avoiding processed food and red meat is a major part of that discussion.

In the coming months you most likely will hear of friends who have been diagnosed with a chronic disease. While some diagnoses are related to genes, doctors warn that the vast majority are caused by poor lifestyle habits.

Remember what Dr. Lamont Murdoch of the Loma Linda University School of Medicine said – “Faulty genetics loads the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.”

The next time you sit across from someone at a church dinner and notice their meal choices due to high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol or other such illnesses, don’t pity them; instead, learn from them. In our great nation with its abundance of food, they have become the proverbial canary in the coal mine -– a living reminder of the growing unhealthiness of the Standard American Diet that is high in refined carbs (such as white bread) and added fat and sugars.

Both the American Diabetic Association and American Dietetic Association now state that our food and lifestyle have become so poor that they strongly recommend all Americans adopt the diabetic meal plan as the only sensible way out of our national crisis. What does that entail? It’s actually rather healthy – eat high complex carbohydrates (avoid all white breads and pastries and eat 100 percent whole wheat bread), eat plenty of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, and eat meat only sparingly if at all…and avoid red meat due to its strong link to cancer.

Baptist churches have become very politically involved in the past few months regarding various policies they do not agree with coming out of Washington. Before you can demand health care change in Washington, you need to demand change in your own life and in your own social network. Why don’t Southern Baptists take a pro-active stand in the health care debate by radically updating the church suppers to provide more nutritious meals?

Why not ask kitchen staff to begin cooking low-fat meals, substitute the empty calorie “throw away” dinner rolls with 100 percent whole grain bread, and provide far more vegetables that don’t swim in butter or melted cheese? Another healthy step would be to cut back and eventually eliminate all fried food from the menu.

If you want to learn more, read the resources that we provided for you on page 14 of our last issue. We have cut through the jungle of books to provide you the best on contemporary reading and websites. Also, I strongly encourage you to rent the new documentary Food, Inc., from your DVD store and view the website at www.foodincmovie.com.

As Christians we especially need to take care of our bodies so we can live long, healthy lives of successful ministry. And with Southern Baptists being the most obese and unhealthy of any denomination (Georgia is the 11th fattest state in the nation), what do you think that means when Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhists are the most lean? Do the math; we are digging our graves with our knives and forks and are eating out way into oblivion. It’s possible that non-Christian groups will simply overtake us in time, not because of their evangelism efforts but simply due to our bad eating habits.

My physician once shared a nugget of wisdom with me that I have never forgotten. He said, in quoting his mentor, that the best way to live a healthy life is to get a chronic disease and manage it well. What he meant is that many people only make the necessary lifestyle changes after they are diagnosed with a chronic disease; if they take that diagnosis seriously, they can greatly improve their health in ways they were not willing to do before the diagnosis.

That simple statement carries a world of implications, the most prominent which is this: The moment you make that conscious decision to take responsibility for your health you step away from many of your friends who, in their eyes, do not have to make that decision because they are not so afflicted with a chronic disease.

They are just living in the same denial that you lived in for so long. What is sobering is that as you make lifestyle changes to manage your disease, you learn to take care of yourself for the first time.

Now, here is the sobering reality that I referenced in the headline of this article: if you embrace a healthy lifestyle and your friends do not, it is highly likely that you will outlive many of them. Rather than their attending your premature funeral because you did not make the necessary concessions, you will be the one attending theirs.

Think about it. The choice really is yours.