Our spiritual health directly influences our physical well-being. To take advantage of these influences, we need to challenge our minds, build connections with others, and stretch our bodies. These influences are particularly important as we age. Mind and body are interdependent, so these influences should not come as a surprise.

The link between our spirituality and physical health is particularly important for authors. Like most postmodern people, our daily activities in writing involve too much screen time and can be stressful. Stress undermines our immune systems, which leaves us vulnerable to problems like obesity, depression, and opportunistic ailments and disease. Aging authors also contend with bodily atrophy. A sound mind requires a sound body.

In this article, I will analyze three links between spirituality and healthy living from a Christian perspective. Anyone who takes God seriously should be able to find parallels in their own faith community because God loves people and reaches out to everyone. As a Christian author, I am best informed of my community of faith and write from that perspective.

Challenge Your Mind

The mental stimulation required for health begins with a proper set of priorities.

Many authors have written about the need to sharpen the mind and remain intellectually changed throughout life. Few have, however, focused on the need to look outside ourselves. It is easier to focus on ourselves and cocoon which leads to an attitude  of complacency, narcissism, and depression. To challenge your mind, a stimulation is required that we cannot provide for ourselves.

In a Christian context, the first commandment in Bible is: “You shall have no other gods before me.” (Ex. 20:3 ESV) People often think that this first commandment suggests God is looking for sycophants, but the opposite is true. God is all powerful, which implies that he is also self-sufficient. God does not depend on us; we depend on him. Because we are created in the image of God, human life is sacred and has an intrinsic value that does not change with circumstances. In the absence of this image theology, our lives only have market value that goes up and down with our productivity.

The mental stimulation required for healthy living starts with understanding our true relationship with God and his creation. We are not the center of the universe. The first priority in our lives defines all the others. If we recognize that God, not us, is at the center of the universe, we avoid falling into many traps.

Consider what happens if your work becomes your first priority—a common trap today. Everything is defined relative to advancing your career—including your family and friends. If your work goes badly or you lose your job, you have lost both your god and your job. This problem evokes an existential crisis, and nothing else is important to you. Anxiety, depression, and suicide may result. Because we live at a time in America when depression and suicide have reached epidemic proportions, the importance of avoiding this trap has never been greater.

Build Connection

As social animals, we humans need other people to be at peace with ourselves.

Few individuals today are truly independent. We live in homes built by others, eat food grown by others, and speak words that have meaning only when shared with others. We can only feel at peace with ourselves and the universe when we can depend on our relationships.

In a Christian context, Jesus taught that we should love God and love others, which is sometimes called the double-love command (Matt. 22:36-40). It is hard to accomplish either of these goals in isolation because we need the support of others to love the right things in this life. Sin comes naturally; love requires effort. Original sin arises any time you have two kids and one toy. Conflict is our nature.

Our need for connection is basic to healthy living.

A study of nearly 4,000 elderly North Carolinians has found that those who attended religious services every week were 46 percent less likely to die over a six-year period than people who attended less often or not at all, according to researchers at Duke University Medical Center.^⁠[1]

While connection can be found in many ways, religious motivation is more basic than other motivators. In my own work with Alzheimer’s patients, I found that religious songs, like the Doxology, are some of the last things that patients would forget. Singing such songs to patients helped center them and bring them back to their right minds despite their otherwise deep afflictions.

Stretch Your Body

Many authors have reported on the importance of regular exercise in maintaining good health. Strenuous exercise slows the advance of obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and many illnesses, especially heart disease. You just feel better about yourself when you get regular exercise.

In a Christian context, the Apostle Paul writes: “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (1 Cor. 6:19b-20 ESV) Honoring our health is accordingly a form of honoring God who created and sustains us.

I have been a runner since the mid-1960s when I earned a personal fitness merit badge as a Boy Scout and read Kenneth H. Cooper’s book The Aerobics Way. The critical role played by my earning this merit badge arose because it broke my negative self-image as a pudgy kid. Remember my comment about mind and body being interdependent?

Physical strength is an important determinant of our emotional well-being. In working with Alzheimer’s patients, I learned of an affliction known as Sunset Dementia. In early Alzheimer’s patients, their dementia is most pronounced late in the day when they are physically tired. What I did not know at the time was that for the rest of us, anxiety, depression, and grief all work the same way. If mental anguish visits us most frequently when we are physically exhausted, then building our physical strength can have a prophylactic effect on each of these emotional challenges.

Because as an author I cannot work when I am anxious, depressed, or experiencing grief, I have come to view my daily workout as a key strategy in maintaining my productivity as a writer.

The Author

Stephen W. Hiemstra blogs four times weekly (https://t2pneuma.net) with a theme as an online pastor, which includes a Monday podcast. He is currently writing the final book, Image of God in the Person of Jesus, in his Image of God series (https://t2pneuma.com). Stephen began writing fiction during the pandemic, has registered three screenplays, and translates his work into Spanish and German.

[1] Duke University. 1999. “Religious Attendance Linked to Lower Mortality in Elderly.” Updated:  January 20, 2016. Online: https://corporate.dukehealth.org/news-listing/religious-attendance-linked-lower-mortality-elderly Accessed: January 18, 2019.