Unique Original Articles » Eating Disorders-Anorexia and Bulimia

What are they? What causes them?
How does God view them?

Eating disorders are like an escape, at first. It gets our focus off of what is really bothering us and on to something that seems to bring pleasure and relief. It provides an appealing substitute that serves to replace and relieve the unpleasant thoughts we are entertaining. It also offers a great reward. We look forward to loosing weight and to the attention and the compliments that weight loss often brings. It serves as the remedy we need to escape the overwhelming fear, anxiety, disappointment, etc, we may be feeling. For a while it brings us joy and an ability to cope with the bad feelings our thought-life is producing.

We allow our thoughts to be held captive by it because, for a while, loosing weight is not only exciting, but also accepted, supported and promoted in our society. In our society it is perceived that people who can control their eating habits are strong and in control. Therefore they seem to be highly respected, greatly esteemed, and deemed more desirable and successful. We may glory in the fact that we are able to say "no" to food, especially when we know how hard it is for most people to deny themselves. It is something we are good at. We are strong in an area where others are weak. we can control this area of our lives where others cannot.

This is an area of our lives where no one can access, (or so we think) but us. It is our thought-life where the control center is. This control center is where the eating disorder training begins and develops as we intently listen, learn, practice and obey its stringent demands. But, its practice eventually replaces any normal coping ability with an increasingly warped reasoning capacity. We are turning to and depending on something for strength that will eventually, not only make us weak, but also rob us of our very life.

Our normal thought-life is derailed, virtually captured and re-programmed. The payoff seems, for a time, to be well worth the potential threat of any physically debilitating result of food deprivation. But eventually, our casual practice of starving and/or purging becomes an addictive dependence. Instead of us beckoning its services when we don't want to deal with the unpleasantness of our current situation, it demands our constant attention, thus forcing our devoted worship and controlling us physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Our souls become tormented by the unending habitual bombardment of a 'diseased' thought life. We are no longer dictating what we will do with our day but how we will satisfy the increasingly demanding dictates of our habit. We aren't in control but what's worse the Lord isn't either. We bow in submission to a habit that only promises to destroy our very existence.


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